Righting the Ship
by Sueg5123
Summary: "You hired—you—I'm never going on holiday again—you hired a new anchor without my meeting her?" "Him." "Without my meeting him?" "No, you've met him."
1. Too Damn Hot

**Righting the Ship**

The server arrived with the drinks and Charlie accepted his bourbon with a smile and appreciative sip. "We're gonna try Elliot out at 10 o'clock. Starting in two weeks."

MacKenzie allowed the server to place the ice-filled glass and can of Diet Coke in front of her. "With the right E.P., he'll do great. I was sort of hoping that he would, you know, come to 8—"

Charlie affected surprise. "What? And replace Jane?"

"We've talked many times about replacing Jane. She isn't what's needed." Mac paused. "And, besides, she drinks before the show. It's just a matter of time."

" _I_ drink before the show—"

" _You_ aren't on TV."

He used a finger to stir the ice through his liquor. "Any more fall out from your little rant in the Times?"

She snorted. "Well, I seem to be a pariah in the news community. Fox has terminated its pool agreement with us and Sky is making overtures to the same. And Bill O'Reilly denounced me for an hour the other night."

"'When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.' That's Jonathan Swift." Charlie shrugged and took another swallow. "You just told them their jobs, Mac. Of course, they're going to be a little pissed off."

She didn't respond.

"I hired a new anchor for you."

" _You hired_ —you—I'm never going on holiday again—you hired a _new_ anchor without my meeting her?"

"Him."

"Without my meeting him?"

"No, you've met him."

A realization coalesced. She brought her hands to the table, pushing back in her chair. Suddenly comprehending and wishing she didn't.

"What? Charlie—" rather than raise in volume, her voice dropped an octave, in consideration of being in the executive dining room of the Atlantis World Media tower. "Have you hired to front my show—"

"I had to right the ship. Jane's well on her way to irrelevance, we've both seen that coming. Your show is too big an asset to screw around with and Reese is making me aware of the dropping numbers—"

"Charlie—"

"He was in Kandahar for four months, in the Bolan Pass before that— _Jesus_ , he's been filing stories from _caves_ , Mac. He's been shot at in three different countries and abducted twice. Just a few months ago, he was in that convoy that hit an IED and he—"

"I know, Charlie. I know all that. But I can't give my approval." She gave him the fisheye. "I _do_ have approval over the anchor selection."

"You would think so, wouldn't you?"

She reared back now, alarmed into motion. Stuffing her phone into her bag, rising. "I'm going down the street right now and check that contract."

"Mac. It's not gonna go your way." And when she failed to respond, Charlie called again, unmindful of the faces now turned and staring at the two of them. "Mac. When was the last time you saw him?"

She turned and looked heavenward briefly before continuing out. " _Fuck me_."

oooo

Margaret Jordan quietly entered the newsroom and looked to the glass-walled conference room, where staffers attentively followed a young man scrawling on a dry erase board. She dropped her bag on the floor and took a seat in one of the secretarial swivel chairs. And waited.

When the meeting ended and staffers filed out, she rose to greet the man she'd watched earlier.

"Margaret Jordan. Maggie's fine."

"Jim Harper." He ducked his head, then squinted up at her. "Sorry, I don't recognize your name—did we have a meeting or—"

"Will brought me in as floor director and A.P."

"Will? That would be—"

"Will McAvoy. The new anchor."

"For _News Night_? But Jane—and Mac didn't say anything to me about—"

"Possibly because the old anchor doesn't know yet?" she smiled sweetly. "You should probably keep this under your hat for the time being."

"If Charlie hired Will, we'd all know about it by now, from the sound of expensive television equipment being smashed against the walls. By Mac."

Maggie looked sanguine. "Then, you'd better break out the ENG video cam, because it sounds like there's gonna be a murder when he gets here. And he should be along anytime now."

" _Fuck_. I gotta go. Excuse me." He tore through the bullpen to Mac's office and, finding it empty, resorted to digging out his cell. His thumbs moved in a blur of motion.

Maggie watched with amusement until, hearing an approach behind her, she turned and saw Will entering from the elevator landing.

"Good. You made it." He dropped his own bag and a battered guitar case near hers. "Been here long?"

"Um, Will, there's something you should know—"

"Yeah?"

Behind Will, MacKenzie's entrance stopped Maggie's response. Instantly divining who this was, Maggie backed away, leaving the other two in a _nowhere-near-private-enough_ conversation bubble.

"Hey, Mac. It's good to see you." He flashed his most affable smile.

She wore no expression but the color seemed to have drained from her face. He looked much the same, making her heart lurch, but he was different, too. The deep tan that accentuated his golden hair made him resemble some Nordic god. The two-inch scar above his right eyebrow, memento of his recent (and very well-publicized) ambush whilst embedded with 2nd Battalion 7th Marines in Sangin.

He pressed on, undeterred by her surprised silence. "You look great. Read your little op-ed piece in the Times a few weeks back." He shrugged and the smile got a bit bolder. "Vintage Mac. You're always repackaging the whole Don Quixote metaphor—but that's okay. It's you, I like it. You called for reclaiming journalism as an honorable profession, a return to the sacred tenets of the Fourth Estate—"

"In my office. Now."

She strode purposefully in that direction, and, after a short pause, he followed, years of dangerous location reporting having turned his gait into an unselfconscious swagger. All eyes in the newsroom watched as the two disappeared into MacKenzie's office.

Maggie leaned, ill-advisedly, on a line of books as she peered over the shoulder of the I.T. guy.

"' _Jane's Way'_? What's that?"

Sampat wheeled around to look at the limp-haired blond rubbernecking behind him. "The _News Night_ blog. For Jane Barrow, our—"

"Got it." The row of books, anchored only by a tiny Beanie Baby [Tamara's] at one end, suddenly gave way, and Maggie fell onto the desk. She righted herself quickly, trying to salvage some dignity.

He stifled a snicker and stuck out his hand. "I'm Neal. I write the blog."

"Maggie Jordan—"

Raised voices emanated from one of the offices ringing the bullpen. It was clear the E.P. and would-be anchor were sorting through some old personal baggage.

"—and I may or may not be the new floor director and A.P. Right now, I'm guessing, probably not." She dropped into a nearby chair. "Hey. You've got a yellow iNews alert." She pointed to the screen at the workstation where she sat and added, with a slight inflection of superiority, "There's no iNews subscription in the field, so I really haven't seen one of these since I was interning—"

Jim Harper, passing near, leaned over and clicked the mouse. "'Well explosion in the Gulf of Mexico.'" He considered briefly before seeming to dismiss the significance of the alert. "Probably some industrial accident. Dull OSHA stuff. Tess, can you check this out?"

"'Flames reach 150 feet in the air. Fifteen workers believed missing.'" News collection wasn't technically in Neal's job description, and he hadn't intended to usurp Tess's assignment, but his finger was quicker on the mouse and—well, he had aspirations. Anyone in a newsroom would.

There were more loud voices from Mac's office.

"What's their history, do you know?"

"Huh?" Jim had been distracted by Neal's report and it took a moment for Maggie's question to register. "History—MacKenzie McHale and McAvoy—you've never Googled them or anything?"

"Too busy dodging RPGs in the desert, I guess," she deadpanned back to him.

"Are you working this, Tess? And, Kendra, see if you can get a comment from the Coast Guard." He turned his attention back to her. "In a nutshell, Will McAvoy is an oversexed narcissistic asshole who left Mac at the altar and fled to a warzone."

"Making Afghanistan the lesser of two dangerous situations?"

"Funny." He had his cell out. "I get that you're a loyalist, Maggie Jordan. I am, too. So's Mac, and I hope you get the chance to know her. But, right now, on the unlikely chance this explosion turns into a story, I've got to make some calls." Over his shoulder, "Gary, get a twenty on Jane, just in case."

The man in question raised his eyes to the wall clocks denoting multiple time zones. "Judging by the hour, I imagine she's at Chew's, gathering her fortitude."

Everyone suddenly having an urgent assignment, Maggie idly moved the computer mouse. Then, she keyed some letters into the browser. Stats began stacking up and her eyes widened.

"I've got it, too," Neal whispered to her. "Jim. Hey, Jim. We might be-we're chasing the wrong story—"

oooo

"Okay, I get that you're surprised, that Charlie should have handled this a little better—but we were always a great team, Mac—"

"' _Were'_ being the operative word." Behind her desk, at the throne of power, she tried especially hard to keep the tremor from her voice. She needed to dispose of this problem as promptly as possible, before old emotion came flooding back, making resolve unreliable.

"—And if you'd read any of the emails or letters I sent, or taken my calls, you'd know that I absolutely regret how we parted and that I'd do anything—"

"I already did know and I already didn't care."

It brought him up short and he paused for several long seconds before embarking on another tack.

"Mac, this can be great. _News Night_ _with Will McAvoy_. E. by MacKenzie McHale, the best in the business. It'll be a master's class in journalism for all those young pups out there," he added, gesturing to the newsroom staffers, hunkered over their terminals and phones.

"It's plain _News Night_. No 'withs' in the title. Jane doesn't have the title."

"Jane Barrow doesn't deserve the title. And you'll give it to me—"

"No."

"It's stipulated in my contract—"

"—Which hasn't been made operative yet." She glared at him.

The door opened, Maggie gliding in, closely followed by Jim.

"Yes—what?" Mac was reluctant to cede control and she didn't know why this young woman was interrupting.

"My name is Maggie Jordan and an oil well just exploded in the gulf—"

"The Persian Gulf?" Will and Mac ventured, simultaneously.

From the looks of it, Maggie had snookered them both on that count.

She shook her head. "Gulf of Mexico. Coast Guard's searching for 11 possibly 13 missing—"

"I'll fill you in at the rundown," Jim declared, hoping to end this gross impropriety.

"There's more," Maggie said, with a hopeful look at Will.

"They don't need to hear this right now—"

"I'd like to hear it," Will grinned.

" _Shit_ ," Mac said and Jim thought. This was getting out of control.

"The story isn't the fire," Maggie continued. "It's going to be an environmental disaster—"

Mac sat straight upright. "Who says so?" she asked, guardedly.

"Your guy, Neal."

"The I.T. guy?"

"Actually, he's your blog guy—anyway, if you can—"

"Neal!" Jim barked through the open door. "Tell _us_ what you were telling _her_ ," indicating Maggie with a nod.

"This well, Deep Water Horizon—they're drilling at 18,000 feet below sea level. The pressure at that depth is enormous. You can't just yank the pin without consequences."

"What are the consequences?" Mac leaned forward.

"There should have been a fail-safe thing, called an Underwater Blow Out Preventer, that would automatically close and stop the well. But the flames are still 150 feet in the sky, so obviously that didn't happen."

Jim took over, flipping pages in his notepad. "I do have a source—pretty low-level—but the source tells me the pressure at that depth is such that closing the well mechanically is near impossible. Relief wells are the next course of action but they may take months—"

"—And the original well is still spilling oil at the rate of 4.2 million gallons a day," Neal finished.

"At that rate, it'll have spilled as much oil as the Exxon Valdez in 1989." Maggie gave a triumphant look to Will. "It may be the biggest environmental disaster in history." _And we got here in time_.

Will dipped his chin and looked at Neal and then to Mac.

Coolly, Mac turned to Jim. "Where's Jane?"

"Splashed. I can reel her in if you want, but at this hour, I wouldn't recommend it."

"Terry?"

"Doesn't answer."

"Elliot Hersh?"

"Dental appointment. Root canal."

She made a face. "Fucking Tony Hart?"

"No." Jim Harper shook his head. "We've got to go with what we've got, Mac."

It took two more seconds for her to snap into gear. "Call wardrobe. See what they can find for someone freakishly tall." Then, to Will, "Give your dimensions to her—" she pointed to Maggie, "get him into a suit—"

"I've got something with me—"

 _Of course_.

"Jim, can we be ready by the top of the hour?" That would be a bit less than ten minutes.

"I'm on it. I'll grab Jake. He'll have to dual-seat for graphics—Joey won't be in until 8."

"Maggie can handle it," Will volunteered.

"Go, make it happen." Mac waved a hand to dispatch the two junior newshawks, but used it to arrest her _de facto_ breaking news anchor. "This isn't a commitment, Will. I want you to understand that."

"Of course not." He gave her a salacious wink as he departed. "We both know how you feel about commitments."

oooo

He caught her at the elevator landing. Seeing him approach, she pushed again, more urgently at the call button.

"Good show tonight. Can I talk to you for a second?"

"8 to 9's over."

"That's when you talk to me, not the other way around." He offered the patented winning McAvoy smile, the one that always tore at her heart.

 _And he knew it. The bastard._

The elevator door slid open and she stepped in gratefully, immediately punching the button for Lobby.

He leaned against the door, preventing it from sliding closed.

"Yes?"

"You won't remember this but I first met you at the 2005 RFK Awards. You were being recognized for your series on the rise of political action committees. I was—"

"You were there with your girlfriend. Who was not getting an award that night."

He ducked his head guiltily. "You were the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen, and when I finally got to talk to you—you were smart and funny and perfect. I dumped my date—"

"A pattern for which you should probably seek treatment."

He ignored the jab. "—And we had drinks later in the hotel bar. We talked. There was a little jazz group and they played Cole Porter—"

"Because Cole Porter songs always had a great beat and you could dance to them?" she added, mockingly, now crossing her arms across her chest.

"—And that's why I think of you whenever I hear _De-Lovely_ or _You're the Top_."

"Nice to know that I'm on your playlist. Along with every other piece of ass in the city."

"MacKenzie—"

"Let me go," she said, inclining her head to his hand holding open the elevator door.

He didn't seem angry or annoyed or contrite. She would have been pleased, if not mollified, by a little contrition. He just smiled and lifted his hand.

As the door closed, she distinctly heard, "Never again."


	2. Where Is The Life That Late I Led?

He was back.

She had just spent two years pulling him out of her life, exorcising his ghost from every corner of her heart, and he was back.

She had lived for two years with her heart in her mouth, flinching at every news report of a journalist injured by hostile fire. And the two times when he went missing—she had reacted viscerally, vomiting, unable to sleep or eat or concentrate.

Charlie caught on by the second time and had excused her from the newsroom without explanation, simply telling her to return when she felt able.

She came back three days later, immediately after learning of the SEAL raid that had freed a captured solider and two unnamed journalists. His name resurfaced on a byline the following week, dateline Pakistan.

Relief. Then, anger.

oooo

Two crazy weeks of research and production pertaining to the BP oil spill elapsed before Maggie remembered Jim's off-handed taunt. She keyed in the parameters, _McAvoy+McHale~split,_ and clicked on _Search,_ then chugged her now-tepid latte, allowing the browser to retrieve and collate the results.

 _Too Hot Not to Cool Down?_

 _The McAffair_

 _Jilted to the Macs_

 _News-Knight's Tarnished Armor_

 _Shamed Anchor Departs for Afghanistan_

The relationship between MacKenzie McHale and Will McAvoy had been thoroughly anointed by the media's sleaze wing. Maggie found the Huffington Post articles the most detached, and, because of that, perhaps the most believable. Web sites like Popsugar and ICU [nothing to do with intensive care, just an attention-getting acronym for _I See You_ ] were at the other end of the spectrum, heavy on innuendo.

Plotting the scattergram suggested by all the reports, however, led to inescapable facts: McHale and McAvoy had enjoyed a relationship, personal and professional, for two years. Marriage was widely speculated as imminent. However, the relationship suddenly curdled, allegedly because of McAvoy's penchant for womanizing. McHale gave an interview in which she tried to exonerate her former paramour, but her dispirited defense merely confirmed him as a scoundrel in the public mind. Atlantis Cable News subsequently chose to retain the star producer while suggesting greener pastures to the anchor, whose popularity had plummeted in response to media reports.

That the greener pastures turned out to be a desert berm bristling with _mujahedin_ was simply comic irony.

oooo

"You got my contract changed." Will wasn't exactly accusing her, but there was betrayal in his voice.

Mac met his gaze head-on. "We have a moral commitment to Jane, to stand by her at this time—"

"You sent her to the Betty Ford Center to dry out!"

"And we're bringing you on board while she's gone."

" _Interim_ is not what I was promised. I was _promised_ three years, not three months. I was _promised_ my name in the title. I was _promised_ —"

"And _I_ was promised you weren't coming back." His recalcitrance had angered her into saying what was truly on her mind. " _You_ promised that, remember?"

" _Only_ because you asked for it." He stood rock-still and stared at her. "Jesus Christ, MacKenzie, leaving you was more than an act of will—more than a promise—" he paused and swallowed. "It killed me—"

"Going heavy on the melodrama, are we?" she snorted and eyed him. "In any event, you look rather healthy for the walking dead."

"You're just determined not to let me in, aren't you? If you had given a moment's glance to any of my emails, any of the reams of letters I sent, you would understand—"

"I deleted them."

"Yeah, I guessed as much. And knowing it was such a morale boost to me when Rasuli Akhund had me chained to a wall in Karz."

"Stop," she warned. "Don't go there."

His eyes flashed but he held his piece.

"Now. Jane will be terminated, eventually, but HR wants to do it delicately, given her situation and the present media attention. When that happens, within the next 8-12 weeks, the original terms of your contract will be restored. Even your name in the title, _God help us all._ "

"Yeah." He gnawed on the inside of his mouth, anxious to make his exit. He'd tipped far more of his feelings than he'd wanted to, and he thought only to withdraw so as not to be goaded into other revelations.

"Wait—there's one more thing." MacKenzie took off her readers and rubbed the bridge of her nose.

Hand on the door, Will paused and turned back around.

"I think most people here know that you and I were together a while ago."

"I think so too." He tried not to sound supercilious.

"I don't want anyone to know why we're not together now."

"Isn't it a little late for discretion? I mean, there was a lot of attention at the time, the tabloids—"

"Will—"

"You think I'm gonna talk about it?"

"I find it hard to predict what you will or won't do."

He sighed. "I won't be telling anyone." Then, in comic reinforcement, he crossed his heart and held up his right hand in the universal gesture of fealty. "Satisfied?"

She gave a near imperceptible nod amid the barest trace of bemusement.

"And now I've got something for you: I want to go on record saying we should open with the spill."

"Okay."

"I can open with the spill?"

"No, but you're on record."

"The spill is all anyone's talking about."

"We'll still report it, just not at the top."

"Film of an oil rig sinking into the ocean—Mac, that's pretty good television."

"We do the news, not good television."

"For fuck's sake, Mac, there's no reason the two have to be mutually exclusive."

oooo

Sloan barreled into Mac's office. Knocking was for drudges.

"—And this is Sloan Sabbith, who's just been moved to produce our 10 o'clock show, _Right Here_."

The man with curly dark hair tried to rise, but Sloan waved him back to his seat.

"Good to meet you—Mac, did you hear that Reese wants Elliot to shill for Wall Street tonight—"

Mac forced a tight smile. "Sloan has only recently migrated to this star system, so she's sometimes sketchy with basic human courtesies."

"What?"

Mac indicated the man sitting in front of her, who now sported a sardonic half-smile.

"This is Dr. Keith—"

"Uh, that's Keefer—and you really don't have to—you can call me Don—"

"—Professor of Econometric Theory at CUNY. We're going to give him five minutes every night to talk about where we are and how we got here. Economics-wise, that is."

Sloan eyeballed him, stem to stern.

He appraised her in turn, a slight smile turning up his lips. "Um—forgive me for asking, but why aren't you in front of the camera?"

"Because one day I would be told what to do with my hair." She looked to Mac.

Keefer laughed. "You mean to tell me no one dresses McAvoy? Or that he hasn't been chasing the silver out of his hair for ten years?"

"It is a bit different," Mac replied carefully, trying to bail Sloan out of deep waters. "A variation on glass ceilings, I think."

But Sloan had already lined him up for the kill. "Wait. Economics—"

"Actually, econometrics. It's the quantitative analysis—"

She shook off his attempt at explanation. "For two years I've been listening to people like you opine that they can't believe Wall Street crimes haven't been fully exposed, and after two years I'm still fuzzy on what crimes were committed and who you're expecting to do the exposing. You ivory-towered economics scholars need to man up and clean the Augean stable that you've helped create. Stop whining that a bunch of journalists are supposed to do it for you."

He sat up straight and adjusted his glasses.

"Sloan," Mac began in a cautionary tone.

"Tonight, I have to give the A block to an interview with Goldman Sachs, so Elliot can try to explain to our viewers what 'flash crash' means. But it's really just giving an exculpatory soapbox to a bunch of bandits in business suits who managed to rip off American pensioners by manipulating a controlled collapse of the markets."

Don Keefer pushed his glasses up yet again. "Actually, the 'flash crash' served as a good thing, a wake-up call that algorithms and computer-trading could inadvertently spook the market. The fail-safes kicked in, as intended, and at the end of the day, stock prices more accurately reflected fundamental values. Which is a good thing. Don't you agree?"

"Y'know, we've all heard this before, and it _still_ reminds me of Cleavon Little taking himself hostage in _Blazing Saddles_."

"Well," Mac said brightly. "Now that we're all acquainted, let me say that Professor Keefer—"

"Uh, _Don_ ," he persisted.

"—is scheduled for Elliot's panel tonight." Mac gave a helpless shrug to Sloan.

oooo

"I've been thinking, Mac—"

She looked up as Will entered her office for the second time that day, this time more circumspect.

"Maybe Charlie was wrong—maybe I was wrong—maybe there's too much water over the dam with us and this is just a bad idea. Me. Here, at ACN. With you."

She looked down at her desk.

"I can stay until you can find someone to replace Jane permanently and I'll—"

"—Run off to another war?"

He gave an embarrassed huff. "I think I'm out of wars. But there ought to be something—"

She dragged her eyes up again. He was taken aback at how miserable she looked.

Clearing her throat, she said, "That's big of you, Will."

"Yeah, well, I'll tell Charlie—" He hooked his hands in the back pockets of his jeans with a sigh of resignation.

"Will—I—"

"Yes?"

"I'm sorry." Her inflection made it sound like a question.

He took that to mean she was just observing the courtesies; he couldn't believe she was unconvinced of the inevitability of the outcome.

"Yeah, well, me too," he agreed, flatly, and turned to go.

"No. Really. I am." Her head was tilted and she looked familiar and vulnerable. "I am sorry, Will. I was angry with Charlie for trying to—I don't know, _social engineer_ the show—I haven't—and I know it, but I'd like to try—"

He held up a hand. "I don't think it's going to work, Mac. It's been too long and we've both changed—probably not for the better in my case." He scuffed the toe of one shoe over his other foot. "I'll give you my best until you can find someone else."

It seemed like kicking him when he was down, but she knew she had to give him the bad news about tonight's show.

"You need to know: We lost Jan Brewer and had to replace her with a crazy internet professor, a member of the citizen's militia, and the second runner-up in the Miss USA pageant." At his expression, passing from frowning at trying to follow her to a certain wide-eyed understanding of the words she'd used, she hastened to reassure, "It'll be fine. You'll carry them—they'll barely have to speak."

Will's lips compressed into an unsaid profanity. "I thought this was the pinnacle of journalistic professionalism, Mac. Who fucked up?"

"Now, you know I'm not going to tell you that—"

oooo

"I've been cheated on."

Such a bald and unprovoked admission made Will look up from assembling his notes at the desk.

Was she looking for solidarity or sympathy?

"I've been cheated on," Maggie repeated, "one time literally right on top of me. This happened because of me—" She had changed subjects in mid-conversation, without signaling with a change of inflection or tone, so there was obviously some connection that she hadn't yet chosen to reveal. "Jim didn't know."

"Ah. The governor's office."

"Yeah. No one should get fired over this. Especially not Jim."

"What's your role in this snafu?"

"If Mac didn't tell you, then I'm not about to. Anyway, if you didn't fire me in Kandahar when I mistook the backpack of thermite for the backpack with the GPS and the video camera, I'm feeling pretty confident you won't fire me now."

"Smugness is unbecoming in one so young."

Two beats passed.

"Did you go to Afghanistan because you cheated on Mac?"

"Where'd you hear that?" he sputtered.

She patted the laptop computer open beside him.

"That isn't—you shouldn't—don't be spreading that—"

"I can swear I was absolutely the last person in the newsroom to learn of it."

 _Fuck_.

"I don't owe anyone explanations." Pause, then the inevitable over-qualification. "But let's just say the timing worked out well, personally. Mac and I—it was mutually beneficial—"

"Uh huh." Maggie moved back to the floor director's usual position, echoing Herb's countdown. "Back in five—four—three—"

oooo

The telecast was a total goat rope.

Three last minute guests, all in dire need of basic cognitive skills and all in enthusiastic, if remarkably non-verbal, support for Arizona's SB 1070. Flat yes-and-no answers didn't lend themselves to intelligent debate, however, and _News Night_ undeniably limped to a close that night.

Will was aggravated beyond words. As soon as the floor director called, "We're out," he ripped the IFB from his ear and flung it the length of the studio. His glare dared anyone from Control, particularly the E.P., to come to the floor. He gave a dark look to Maggie and strode from the studio, heading upstairs for the reckoning.

Millie waved him into Charlie's office.

"I came up to personally apologize for tonight's show."

"The show kind of got away from you," Charlie allowed, his eyes betraying amusement at the obvious understatement.

"It bordered on unprofessional."

"I would normally blame the E.P."

"It was my fault."

Charlie shrugged. "I knew there would be a little tension in the beginning, but you two will find your rhythm again. You both want what's best for the show, and the answer to that is each other."

"Yeah, well, I've been feeling the love and—Charlie, this isn't going to work." He sighed in frustration. "I told Mac earlier that she can look for a new anchor—"

"Wait it out, Will. She'll come around. Have a little faith."

"Yeah. Well, right now, I'm wondering why the fuck I'm here. NBC wanted me to pinch-hit _Meet the Press_ , you know. I could be doing that."

"You're too smart to just understudy David Gregory. Besides, you don't want to moderate a bunch of partisan talking heads. You're better than that." Charlie forced a smile. "And you're here because you and Mac make a great team. This is an exciting time to be at ACN."

Will shot him a baleful look.

"Okay, admittedly, I may have misjudged her initial reaction—" Charlie hoisted shaggy eyebrows. "It's been two years. Time hasn't helped?"

Will gave a tight shake of the head. "Charlie, I can't figure out if she's angry that I came back or angry that I left in the first place."

"Both, I imagine." Charlie shook his head. "Now, get it together down there. Fast."

oooo

Mac collared him as soon as he walked from the elevator.

"Are you in or are you out?"

"What?"

"You heard me. Are you in or are you out? Are we doing this thing?"

Will gave a measured glance in each direction, communicating his incredulity at being called out for what was plainly her fuck-up, before re-centering his attention. "You're mad at _me_ right now?"

"When I say dump out of it, I mean, dump out of it." This was fierce Mac. "Yes, we fucked up. On a huge subject. But ours was a mistake. Yours is fear." She crossed her arms. "Tonight's Friday. By Monday, I want to know—are you in or are you out?"

She stormed away without waiting for a response.

oooo

Will's office was still unpacked. The better to make a hasty getaway. He smoked three cigarettes in rapid succession and by the time he emerged from his office, the janitor was running the buffer over the floor tile upstairs. The bullpen was empty.

He went back to his office and grabbed his jacket and briefcase. He doused the fluorescent overhead lights, took two steps, then reversed course. He flicked the lights back on.

Only two framed photographs were on the shelf behind his desk. He'd lost the heart to fully unpack after the first conversation with Mac today. But these two—they were the important ones. One from last year, him and General Stanley McCrystal and the entire aircrew, in front of a Blackhawk helicopter. The other, from 2006, a photo of the crew of CNN's _Washington Roundtable_ , with him at the anchor desk and MacKenzie behind him, her hand casually resting on his shoulder.

He reached for his phone and punched the now-familiar contact.

The staff would be out doing the show's post-mortem wherever they normally did that sort of thing. He trusted that Maggie would be with them, and that Mac—

"Is MacKenzie around there?"

"Yeah." Still, Maggie seemed uncharacteristically wary. "Will—don't—you know, she's trying to do a good show and she's risking a lot to do it—"

"Can you put her on the phone?"

Another hesitation, then, "Yeah. Wait one."

He could hear her shuffle the phone across whatever watering hole they were in, music and voices in the background.

Muffled, "It's Will."

There was an audible crackle while the cell phone was transferred hand-to-hand. Then, a long pause.

MacKenzie's voice came over the line, soft with fatigue and sadness. "I'm sorry. About everything. Just sorry. There's no way I can even—"

"I'm in."

"What?" Her voice got a bit stronger.

"I'm in."

"You'll stay?"

He knew she couldn't see that one side of his mouth had hitched up. "See you Monday, Mac."


	3. Another Opening, Another Show

**Another Opening, Another Show**

"Good evening, I'm Will McAvoy. This is _News Night_ , and what we just saw was a clip of Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism chief to President George W. Bush, testifying before Congress. He opened with an apology for having failed to keep America safe on September 11th, 2001. Americans liked that moment. I liked that moment. Adults _should_ hold themselves accountable for failure. And so, tonight, I'm beginning this newscast by acknowledging the failure of this program to successfully inform and educate the American electorate. The reason for our lapse isn't a mystery: We took a dive for the ratings."

"That's kind of insulting to those of us who've been here for longer than two months," hissed an anonymous wag in Control.

"Shut it," Mac commanded, not even turning to catch the offender.

Meanwhile, Will looked into camera 2 when the red light went on.

"From this moment forward, we'll be deciding what goes on our air and how it's presented based on the simple truth that nothing is more important to a democracy than a well informed electorate. We'll endeavor to put information in a broader context because we know that very little news is born at the moment it comes across our wire—"

In Control, another voice asked, rhetorically, "He _does_ know we haven't used wire services in decades, right?"

"A little less attention to _his_ content and a little more attention to what _we're_ doing, people," Mac warned.

"—We're not waiters in a restaurant serving you the stories you asked for just the way you like them prepared. Nor are we computers dispensing facts, because news is only useful in the context of humanity. You may ask, who are we to make these decisions. 'We' are MacKenzie McHale and myself.

Ms. McHale is our executive producer, who marshals the resources of over one hundred reporters, producers, analysts, and technicians. I'm _News Night's_ managing editor and will make the final decision on everything seen and heard on this program—"

Another indignant voice in Control: "Whoa. Is he saying _everything_ we've done for the last three years has been shit?"

"He's _saying_ —he's saying we're _re-dedicating_ ourselves to our mission," Mac explained tersely, in a low voice, using the same words Will had used on her and Charlie when he'd briefed them about his script.

" _It's a new compact," Will had emphasized. "Jane's gone, I'm back. We stand for something—we have a moral obligation. News organizations are a public trust, with the responsibility to inform and influence the national conversation."_

" _And how are things on the fortieth floor?" Mac lobbed to Charlie, not even trying to keep the archness from her voice. "ACN might only account for three percent of AWM's revenue, but Lady Leona isn't charitable enough to keep us on if we're not profitable."_

" _Mrs. Lansing is very sensitive to public perception, and she is aware that_ News Night _is the jewel in the crown." Charlie made a dismissive gesture. "No problems with the Lansings. Not now—not since Will came back to helm—"_

" _I thought I was the helmsman and he was the decorative figurehead."_

" _If you want to be technical," Charlie allowed, "you're both oarsmen and_ I'm _the captain. But, together, we make a fucking brilliant team. So, c'mon, get with it, Mac. Lean in."_

Brilliant team. Mac snorted. Will's brilliance was usually tempered by his unpredictability.

But she said, loud enough for everyone in Control to hear, "It doesn't hurt, sometimes, you know, to remind yourself to keep your eye on the doughnut and not the hole."

"Yeah," the same anonymous staffer muttered in counterpoint, "it also doesn't hurt to remind yourself that your objective was to drain the swamp, and that's why you're up to your ass in alligators."

"Be professional, people," she scowled.

"—We're the media elite. We'll be back after this with the news."

oooo

The following day, Jim sidled up to Maggie after a pitch meeting that had focused on Syria, a gun battle in Yemen, and the abduction of a British aid worker in Afghanistan.

"How long were you—you know—over _there_?"

"Embedded? About 15 months."

"You and Will—"

"— _And_ Milo, our videographer, _and_ Rahim, our fixer."

"Of course—that's what I meant." Jim's nervousness always played out in his voice, which lost smoothness and began to dam up, just like his thoughts. "I just—well, I was just going to ask what it—what it was like—how you got there and hooked up with—what kind of—"

Maggie reached in a desk drawer for a couple of Clif bars, pitching one at him, and swiveled around in her chair.

"I was a stringer at CNN. But it was just piece work. It wasn't even making my rent, so when they put out a call for someone to go to Afghanistan, it was a no-brainer."

"Kind of a dangerous decision, wasn't it?" _Did she always make those kinds of reckless choices?_

"I figured it would make or break my career."

"So—which?"

 _Could he really be this thick?_

"I appear to be doing okay. Field work, even over there, is just a different kind of professional finishing school."

"How'd you hook up with Will?"

"To tell the truth, I had no say in the matter. I was pretty far down the food chain, you know. He had enough clout to pick his own team and, for some reason, he picked me." Privately, she still marveled at that. Will hadn't even held it against her that she'd lost his thumb drive and spilled coffee on the ENG camera equipment that very first morning.

"Were you with him when he got snatched—"

"To begin with, I think even he would resist characterizing the first episode as an abduction. He was missing for two hours, and the truth is simply that he became separated from the rest of us and got lost. The streets in Jalalabad are labyrinthine, at best. Calling it a kidnapping was advantageous to the CNN suits looking to hype the show. But the second episode—" She paused dramatically, gauging his interest, which looked to be significant, "That was genuine scaresville."

"How so?"

"We were stopped at a checkpoint in the Sangin Valley. That's in Wardak province, about 60 miles southwest of Kabul." At his confused expression, she added, "You've heard of _Kabul_ , haven't you?"

"Sure, um, yeah. Of course."

"Good, there'll be a test later. Anyway, Milo was driving. When we came up on the checkpoint, something seemed to spook our fixer, spooked him enough to urge Milo to gun the engine and by-pass the checkpoint. But we had _visas_ , work permits, we had _credentials_ —we were there _legally_." Her rationale had a rehearsed logic to it, as if she had gone over and over these facts. She smiled bitterly. "And the men at the checkpoint had Kalashnikovs. So we stopped."

"Soldiers?"

"Afghani militia."

"Whose side were they on?"

"Excellent question. By this stage of the incursion, tribal militia members were augmenting Afghani national forces, trying to offset the vacuum created by American troop withdrawals. But the problem was, the militias answered to their tribal chieftains, not Washington, not Kabul."

Jim was raptly attentive.

"We'd had the Centurion training, so we thought we knew how to skirt the bad stuff—"

"Centurion?"

"Hostile environment training. CNN made us take the three-week course before we hit the line, it was required for the K & R insurance—"

"K & R?"

Now Maggie couldn't disguise her exasperation. "You know, _kidnap and ransom_ _insurance_. The CNN overseas bureau insured all the correspondents. Fixers, too," she added, in response to his unspoken follow-up.

She sighed and resumed the narrative. "But, anyway—that day, none of the usual strategies were working. The militia members were becoming more agitated. Finally, they pulled Will and our fixer out of the car, and ordered Milo to drive away. We found out later that Will had told them that Milo was my brother. The militia didn't want the cultural inconveniences attendant to detaining a woman. They were happy to remand me to my 'brother's' guardianship and make him cart me away.

"Will and Rahim were turned over to the local chieftain, then passed again to the neighborhood Big Bad."

"Yeah, I remember that—then, the spec ops thing. It was a big deal here, too, you know." He shut down abruptly, hoping he hadn't already said too much, hoping that Maggie would simply take his sentence at face value. Loyalty to Mac really precluded any further words about the tension and anxiety in the newsroom resulting from Will's missing status.

"He got lucky. Dodged another bullet. The bullet's over here, _ping_ , he's over there." She played with a lock of hair. "It happened a lot. He was a lucky guy. Until he wasn't anymore."

"You mean last October…"

She made a short hum of acknowledgement. "And, you know, the funny thing is, it seemed like he had some premonition about that." She shifted in her chair, remembering. "He didn't let me go that day. Gave me some piddly make-work at base, filling out expense spreadsheets—and god knows financials are my short suit. And then he changed seats with Milo, who _always_ rode shotgun. But that day, Will rode up front."

"So, when they tripped the IED—"

"The blast killed the driver. Threw Will from the truck and split his head on a rock." She offered a small ironic smile with the obvious follow-up. "Fortunately, he has a very hard head, and now he has a raffish scar to show for a bad morning."

"Shit." It was the only thing Jim could think to say.

"I'll tell you something no one else knows," Maggie began, conspiratorially, "but you gotta promise to keep it to yourself. That blast left him pretty much stone deaf in his left ear. So if you ever see him switch the IFB from one ear to the other, you'll know he's tuning you out."

" _Jim_."

Mac stood across the room at the hall leading to Control, visibly annoyed. She tapped her watch. "Joey's been waiting on you to build the graphics for the Syria segment." It didn't escape her notice that he had been in close conversation with _Margaret-you-can-call-me-Maggie-Jordan_. Who might be an exceptional young newsroom talent except for the distressingly confident swagger she'd picked up from Will.

"Be right there, Mac." Turning back to Maggie, Jim shrugged. "I gotta—well, you saw. But thanks for answering my question. We'll catch up later."

oooo

Later, in Control, during a break in the telecast, Mac motioned Jim near and covered her mic.

"Earlier, were my eyes deceiving me or are you trying to gather rosebuds with the new hire?"

"Wha, rosebuds? What? Maggie? I was just asking—I mean, she was telling me what it was like to be embedded."

"I'm sure she's had a few colorful experiences, but you should keep in mind that sometimes those stories become a bit embellished over time. There's a tendency to accentuate the adventure and downplay the tedium. And she, uh—"

His chin dropped and he looked up at her with puzzlement.

"What I'm trying to say is— _Joey, where's the card for the SOT?_ —what I mean is that, she might be a little, um, worldly—"

"Like a loose woman?"

"No. That is _totally_ _absolutely_ _not_ what I was going to say." _Jesus. How could anyone make that leap?_ "It's just that she's seen a lot, you know, being over _there_ , and with _him_ and all. You, on the other hand, haven't had that experience and, sure, it may seem glamorous, but it's really—"

"You think I'm naïve?"

"No. Well—yes." Frustrated, she finally toggled off the mic pack and dragged Jim to a corner. "I'm just saying that you shouldn't be too over-awed by her. Take your time. Don't rush into anything."

"Um, sure, Mac."

oooo

Ben—medium height, muscular build, and eyes so striking that at least three female _News Night_ -ers were mortally struck as he entered the bullpen—waited for MacKenzie after the show on Monday night.

On Tuesday night, it was Jason.

Two nights later, Miles.

On Friday night, Will hustled to intercept her as she exited Control.

From the corridor, he could see, _sure enough_ , another stud-muffin milling between desks.

"Having a young week?" Will asked under his breath, keeping pace with her down the darkened corridor.

"He's a doctoral student."

"Physical therapy?"

"Astrophysics. That would make him a rocket scientist. Literally a rocket scientist."

"Yeah, well, that'll pay the rent," Will observed, lamely. "There are better ways to get back at me, you know."

"I've put up a suggestion box. No takers so far."

He took her elbow and stopped her. "Can I offer some advice, Mac? You're a beautiful, accomplished woman. Probably have a few dollars in the bank, too. For those reasons alone, he may want to—"

She fixed him with a cool gaze, daring him to put it into words.

" _You know_."

Her teeth suddenly latched onto her lip in a studied pose of thoughtfulness. "I think I _do_ know."

"Mac." He adopted an appealing mien. "He could be your—" he fumbled when noticed her expression, retreating from his original thought, "— _brother_."

"Another lovely image you've conjured for me." Then, reaching the attractive young man, "Zach—give me a moment to grab my bag and I'll be right with you."

oooo

The following night, Charlie slipped into Mac's office without knocking. Mac and Neal looked up at the intrusion, Neal's words trailing into a mumble.

Neal's eyes darted between the two. "I can come back later—"

"No. Finish what you started." Charlie locked his arms in front of him.

Neal looked to Mac for a clue.

At their stubborn silence, Charlie resumed. "I'm onto you two. You're in here telling Mac there have been additional threats—"

Neal's expression plainly revealed the truth of Charlie's words.

"—and she's giving you marching orders about what to do with the information. Of which, _not telling me_ is at the top of the list."

"Charlie," she began, in a placating tone. "It really wasn't worth bothering you."

"How about you let me decide that?" He dropped his arms and pointed a finger at Neal. "You see any more of these threats, you bring them directly to me. Understand?"

"Yessir," Neal chirped, beating a hasty retreat.

Charlie leaned on Mac's desk. "Did you really think I wouldn't find out that some—whatever they call it, internet hobgoblin—"

" _Troll_."

"Thank you, _troll_ —has been making threats against you?"

"How did you—"

"He _isn't_ the I.T. guy, Mac," he said, nodding to the space Neal had previously occupied. "We really do have an I.T. guy, though, and he works for me."

Mac sat back in her chair. "It really isn't anything to get upset over."

"Yeah, you said that before, so now you're wrong twice. If someone's threatening the show, I need to know about it. If someone is personally threatening my star E.P.—"

"Just a misanthrope with a keyboard—"

"Mac," he warned again. "Threats are serious, and we are going to take this seriously. I'm putting a man on you—"

"Charlie! That's over the top!"

"What's over the top?"

Behind them, Will leaned in the door, already changed back to his street clothes. "Were you talking about the show? Top of the D was crap, but we finished strong. That nutty professor you brought in did okay. How about a drink?" He offered that amused, roguish wink again.

Mac began stacking and squaring folders. "Can't. Busy."

There was a long pause, then Will couldn't help himself. "Another astrophysicist?"

She coolly met his eyes. "Actually—U.S. attorney."

He elected to stay silent at this.

Charlie waited a moment, his eyes bouncing from Will to Mac and back again. Then, finally, "Sorry you can't join us, Mac. You know I believe in a happy crew. Anyway, Will, I've got a new small batch bourbon." He shot a meaningful, parting glance at Mac before joining Will.

oooo

Maggie watched McAvoy and Skinner leave Mac's office together, and divined that this might be her opportunity for an awkward conversation. She rifled across Jim Harper's desk until she found something interesting—an unclassified State Department assessment of Mubarak's regime—then scurried to Mac's office.

"Something else?" Looking up and being surprised to see Maggie instead of Will or Charlie, Mac offered an explanatory aside. "I thought you were—oh, never mind. What've you got?"

Maggie put the folder on Mac's desk and then rested her fingertips upon it, so that the red herring wouldn't derail the conversation she intended.

"I'm about to say something that's inappropriate, insubordinate, and likely grounds for termination," Maggie began, "but you know you could give Will a break and just have the guys meet you in the lobby."

"You don't know what you're talking about."

Maggie shrugged in deference but her expression plainly conveyed her confidence that she did, in fact, know about that which she spoke.

"Look. He left _me_." Mac exhaled and paused to regroup. "It's not as if—I mean, I'm not—what I'm trying to say is, I'm not doing it intentionally. I'm just not considering his feelings." She swallowed and tried to look resolute.

Maggie gave a perfunctory nod and backed from the room.

 _Damn._

 _Damn him._

 _He left_ me _._

But without an audience, her righteousness was hollow. She couldn't deceive herself.

Will had left her, true—but he'd merely been following direction, hadn't he? Infuriated and irrational direction, delivered at a moment when she couldn't even bear to look at him. She had to _produce_ their ending because she couldn't control it any other way.

How was she to have known he'd interpret it so badly—so literally—so dangerously?


	4. Why Can't You Behave?

**Why Can't You Behave?**

"Hit me again."

Leona Lansing indicated her empty glass, obviously unwilling to shift her stylishly-shod feet from where they rested on the corner of her desk.

Charlie Skinner had given up protesting by this point, so he reached for the bottle of Moet and sloshed a sloppy pour that immediately fizzed and overfilled the flute.

"Jesus," she glared in mock consternation, righting herself and sopping at the spilled bubbly. "This is the good stuff, too. You're not very good at this."

"You've known that for years." He sat back in the comfortable chair opposite the spotless plane of her desk. "What's this all about, Leona?"

"I want to know what's happened to _News Night_ , Charlie. What happened to the human interest stories?" She eyed him over the top of her glass. "I used to love the human interest stories."

"You know damn well we were the fucking walking dead doing those stories, Leona."

"But you kept McHale—"

"She just needed a faster car. _McAvoy_." When she looked askance, he added, "It's a metaphor I'm working on."

"Well, keep working on it, because I don't know what the hell you're talking about." She drained her glass and held it out again. "Don't look at me that way, _Charles_. It's three days before Christmas, I'm entitled to fuck off if I want to." She winked. "I've got a _really_ good job, Charlie."

He had to nod agreement at that.

"Now, what should I give McAvoy for Christmas? It needs to be something showy, so I can impress him with how grateful we are that he gave up being an idiot war correspondent."

"How about what you gave me last year?"

"Come to think of it, he'd look pretty good in formal wear."

"I look better out of it." His eyes twinkled but he tried to keep the rest of his expression neutral.

"I may ask you to prove that one day, old man. Here, what's this?"

Charlie had pushed a small wrapped box across the vast uncluttered expanse of her desk.

"Memento. From California."

She cocked her head. "KTLA?"

"You remember—"

"Hard not to. You rode me pretty hard back then."

He shrugged. "You were dynamite in front of the camera, kid—"

"Don't call me kid—it stopped being funny about thirty years ago." She paused, reflecting. "But you still wouldn't let me do hard news. And the birthday parties for zoo elephants got very tedious."

"Weren't you just extolling the value of human interest stories? Anyway, your story inside the Ventana nuclear plant obliterated the stigma of all those human interest stories."

"Ventana nearly obliterated a lot of things, Charlie, starting with most of Southern California." A small ironic smile played across her lips as she pulled the broad, flat black plastic case from the box. "Is this—Ventana?"

"The only thing I could find was a three-quarter inch format U-matic tape. The station wiped everything else, saving money. By the way, good luck finding the equipment that can play it back. Obsolete doesn't begin to describe it. More like prehistoric." He looked pleased with himself at having found the relic. "No one remembers Ventana now. Three Mile Island eclipsed it a few weeks later. And then you left broadcasting—"

"Just moved to another position in the family firm," she corrected firmly. "And a few years later I was able to bring my former news director—"

"Those days seem rather free-wheeling now." As they paused, seemingly by mutual consent, to recall the past, he got up to add another measure of bourbon to his glass.

Leona carefully moved the artifact to the credenza and swiveled back to face Charlie, her feet off the desk now and her expression stern. "But we were talking about McHale and McAvoy and the show."

"I thought we were talking about when we worked at KTLA."

She took a deep breath. " _News Night_ 's causing some headaches—"

"Political push-back?"

"For AWM and for _me_. I need sympathetic ears in Congress for the spectrum auction, and I won't have them if McAvoy or McHale—"

Taking a sip, Charlie thumped his chest.

"—Or _whomever_ it is, keeps riling up the right wing. _News Night_ 's gonna tone it down or I will—"

"Fire him?" Charlie gave a derisive snort.

"Fire _you_. Fire _McHale_. Move McAvoy to—I don't know—broadcast Siberia. He can do human interest stories for dayside." She looked pleased by the irony of that plan.

And athough Charlie discounted outright her threat to fire _him_ , the rest of it was a potent prescription.

oooo

Two days before Christmas and most of the newsroom had cleared out. The younger ones had flown off to reunite with families in distant states, a situation MacKenzie countenanced only because they were young. And it was, to paraphrase Charles Dickens, only once a year. Their elders—Kendra, Herb, Jake, Gary—remained at theirs posts, but nonetheless looked grateful that December 23rd would be the final broadcast for a week.

Maggie had opted to stay in New York. There had been no clamor from her family to visit ( _there never was_ ), so she figured she might as well offer continuity at work during the holiday period.

So, of course, that meant she—along with Neal, who also had chosen to hang around—was the natural heir to whatever odd tasks cropped up for the next week.

But first on her agenda was pinpointing and removing the mistletoe some misguided co-worker, probably Tess, had hung through the entire floor. That nutty professor had already nabbed her once, as she loitered unsuspectingly, and she wasn't about to get nailed by him a second time.

 _So not her type._

"Prostitution." Jim dropped his yellow legal pad on Maggie's desk.

"Come again?"

"China's commenced a nationwide crackdown on prostitution."

"I'm happy for them."

"I mean, that's all I've got for the C block. Mac asked me to sort the rundown tonight and all I've got is Chinese hookers."

"I see your dilemma." Maggie chewed contemplatively on the eraser of her pencil. "And you've already got the riots in Tunisia—"

"B block."

"—Greek debt—"

"Bottom of A."

"Reversing the so-called Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy in the U.S. military?"

"Final quarter hour."

"And the U.S. diplomatic cables leaked by Wikileaks?"

"I didn't know about—"

"iNews alert. It's orange, baby." She gestured to the computer screen then spun back around. "Have you bounced any of this off Will yet?"

"No."

"Good. Don't. Because you're burying your lead."

"I'm not sure I need you to—"

"You're standing at _my_ desk, whining about your rundown. And, trust me, if you take that idea of _closing_ with Don't Ask, Don't Tell to Will—well, give me a chance to get out of the building first."

Jim retrieved his pad and scribbled some notes. " _Lead_ with DADT. Shift everything else down one position—" he cast a wary glance up, "—assuming you agree—"

"You know, I can't tell If you're patronizing me right now."

"Really?"

She looked up as people crossed the newsroom floor. "By the way, who's that guy?"

"What guy?"

" _That_ guy." She inclined her head to indicate the black Colossus trailing Mac from the elevators to her office.

"Keep it to yourself, but that's security."

"This is the 23rd floor of a skyscraper in Manhattan. Are we expecting roving bands of squeegee men?"

He shrugged. "The show's been getting threats. Kinda vague-ish when Jane was here, but now that McAvoy has been chumming—"

"Chumming?"

"—Chumming the water," he repeated, with emphasis, suddenly on surer ground with Maggie than he had been in the first part of their conversation. "The loonies are stirred up."

"So why isn't the security on Will instead of Mac?"

"Yeah, at first, that seemed sort of weird. Then, it suddenly seemed like a credible threat—I mean, a looney who bothered to read the show credits and send threats _by name_ to the producer. Might be someone who's serious. Anyway, Charlie Skinner brought in a security consultant and now there's a detail on both of them."

oooo

"Honey, are you saying the United States of America is getting out-lawyered?"

"Don't call him honey, it makes me crazy." _Fuck_. Will immediately tried to walk it back. "I didn't say that, it just came out of my mouth. Words."

She heard it but didn't believe it and certainly tried not to react to it. Surely Will wouldn't have—and not with Wade _standing_ _right here_ —

"Let me talk to Mac for a minute."

Wade shot a last hopeful look to Mac. "Find me on the terrace."

"You can't have your boyfriend lobby me to go easier on him," Will immediately chided.

"He wasn't lobbying, he was pitching a story."

"I wasn't aware he'd joined our staff." Pause. "So, he's your boyfriend?"

"I guess he is," she sniffed.

"When you introduce him, that's what you call him?"

"I call him _Wade_. How do you introduce the Netflix queue of crazy divorced women with digitally remastered breasts you spend your nights with?"

" _Touché_. But do tell me more about real relationships."

"I'm not keeping myself in jail anymore," she insisted. "He's my boyfriend, we're serious, I want a partner."

"I'm glad you're letting yourself out of jail—you _owe_ it to yourself."

That did it.

Chastened, she finally dropped her eyes. She let a beat pass, then made an effort for conciliation. "You should come out to the party, Will."

oooo

Sloan paddled the swizzle stick around her glass. "What do you think he's doing?"

"Trying to civilize her," Mac observed sagely, before sipping her own drink.

"Oh. That's not going to end well." Another Sloan understatement.

"Hang on—it looks like it's coming any second—"

Across the room, Nina Howard, in tight-fitting gold lame, splashed the contents of her champagne flute into the face of Will McAvoy, who himself was resplendent in new formal wear by Fellini. ( _Armand_ , not Federico. Although by this point, Will was definitely beginning to feel _Fellini-esque_.)

Like viewing a previously-seen movie from the twelfth row of a theater, Mac noted with precision, "There it is."

Nina Howard departed, her assessment of Will's overture now dripping from his face.

"My mission here is complete," Mac announced, just as Wade glided up and steered her off to the ersatz bar area for refills.

Sloan tried to slink down when Will slipped alongside.

"That didn't go well."

"You think?" he asked with barely restrained consternation.

"Well, perhaps there's something about seduction that you're just not getting." Delivered with characteristic Sloan social-cluelessness.

"She seemed to find me totally _resistible_." He plucked at the suit. "I'm a wallflower in a brand new tux."

They stood together in silence for a minute.

"Since I'm here—do you—um, want another drink or to dance or something?"

"Oh, no, McAvoy. I knew you before, remember?" She downed the rest of her drink. "Do you really think I would ever come between you and—"

"Look. There's nothing between me and MacKenzie," he protested. "Just air."

"Uh huh. Well, the air you want is on the terrace with What's-his-face, the walking plaid shirt."

oooo

A week later, Maggie had been the first to reach him after the show. "You okay, boss?"

Without directly responding, Will tugged out his IFB earpiece and rose slowly from the desk. After protracted seconds of simply standing there, he left the studio.

Meanwhile, in Control, several staffers exchanged glances and nervous titters.

Jim exhaled shakily. "What was that? Mac, do you—?"

Kendra forced herself above the din. "I've got Charlie Skinner on line two."

Mac yanked off her headset. "Not now," she said grimly over her shoulder as she pushed through the glass door and made for Will's office.

"Will, we've got to talk about what just— _what are you doing_?"

"Eyedrops." He faced her down, head canted, the missed medicine running down one cheek. "I got an eye infection from all the alcohol thrown at me over the last week."

"Are you blaming an _eye infection_ for what just happened?"

His face was pinched with emotion she couldn't place, and she relented in the face of it.

"Here—let me. Okay, you're going to have to sit, I can't reach you up there."

He blindly surrendered the bottle and dropper to her, then fell into a chair and turned his face up.

"Stop squinting. Open your eye. Relax. That's it—just a—" Drop, drop, drop.

"Ow." The medicine stung

Her hands paused, judging efficacy.

"Wait—Mac. The other, too. Please."

"You have an infection in both eyes?" She sounded dubious.

"Yes," he lied. _Anything, god, to keep her close_. That familiar intimacy, her hand lightly touching the side of his face, her smell, her breath warm and near. He was thankful he could keep his eyes closed, lest they mirror his thoughts right now.

Task complete, she leaned back against the desk and resumed. "You're not getting out of it. _Dead air_ , Will—that's the cardinal sin of this medium."

He shrugged, his eyes still screwed shut. "The studio lights began to strobe—I guess I zoned out for a moment."

"Bollocks. I _know_ you. There's something you aren't—"

Another explanation occurred to him and he tried it out. "I was _reacting_ to the interview, that's all—allowing the audience at home the time to react and—"

" _And_ auditioning as the Dan Rather doppelganger? Will, the audience at home had _changed the channel_ by the time you recovered because there was no sound coming forth from ours. You left your _interviewee_ twisting in the wind. That poor Marine didn't know what he'd said that made you—"

Will's shoulders hunched and he turned his back to her.

"Will?"

He continued to stare out the window and, as she looked at him, Mac considered the new realization that _there might be something wrong with Will_. That, either because of war or because of what she—no, _they_ , had done to each other years ago—something fundamental had changed within him. Something invisible to the eye. Imperceptible.

Except to her.

She reached for the phone. "Jim, I want every light on the desk changed and re-aimed—Well, get them on it first thing in the morning, then— Will told me the studio lights strobed tonight and distracted him."

 _There_. That should allow him to save face with the crew, at least. She wasn't sure yet what she was going to tell Charlie, or what explanation could be manufactured for the 44th floor.

"Will, why don't you sit down?" She wasn't feigning concern; at this moment, she genuinely wasn't sure of his state of mind. "Loosen the damn tie and close your eyes. Give the eyedrops a chance to work. Get back to your usual zen."

At this, he turned back around, eyes downcast, not meeting hers.

"I'm okay, Mac. I lost my bearings for a moment, that's all—it interrupted the rhythm of the show. Sorry about tonight. It won't happen again."

Her teeth latched her lower lip as she considered how best to proceed. Finally, she forced a sympathetic smile. "Get a good night's sleep, Will. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Yeah. Tomorrow."

oooo

The blast woke him at two-thirty. As it did most mornings.

His apartment was very quiet. Twenty stories up usually muted the city noise, especially at this hour of the night.

But the reverberations of the dream left him feeling anxious and vaguely nauseous. He couldn't go back to sleep, so after a few minutes of lying awake, he got up for a drink. The refrigerator light was unbelievably harsh at first, then almost hypnotic. He stood for minutes staring at the contents of the fridge without recognizing any particular object.

When he returned to the bedroom, he merely sat on the edge of bed. He knew he wouldn't be returning to sleep anytime soon, and the dream's residue, an elusive unsettled feeling, left him alert and not at all given to relaxation.

His mind churned.

The worst words you ever heard?

Two years ago, they were, _There's something I need to tell you, Will_.

Of course, October last brought a new metric. It was, "Who's been hit?"

And then, the inevitable protocols. Waiting to see the extent of your own wound mirrored in the face of some kid with a medic's satchel. Waiting to be told you would make it ( _because no one would ever tell you you wouldn't_ ). Waiting to learn who had been worthier and who had been less so.

All these memories, carried around like stones. And he had only recently begun to feel the weight and hardness of them.

The phone rang. A dim early morning light now illuminated the room. As he reached for the receiver, he noted the time. 6:35. He couldn't account for four hours of wakefulness.

"Will, it's Charlie. Look, I'm sorry to call early on a Saturday, but—can you come into the office at 11:00?"

"What's going on?" Breaking news?

"I'll see you at 11:00."

oooo

"You called me in for Bigfoot?"

"We should be so lucky." Charlie grabbed Will by the elbow and propelled him toward Mac's office. "I called you in for this," holding up the morning's edition of _The Daily News_. A box on the lower right corner had the customary bad photograph of a local politico and the caption, _Fed. Atty. Campbell Conspires with ACN Show._

"What?" Then, as they entered the office and the door closed, Will looked back at Charlie. "We need a team for this?"

"Sloan's a good advisor on damage control—"

"Perhaps because she's at the root of so many—"

"Watch it, McAvoy," she warned.

Mac was at her desk, discomfort and mortification plain upon her face.

Will flipped pages to find the one with the story.

"I can save you time, Will. The byline is Nina Howard," Sloan offered, matter-of-factly.

"Fucking hatchet job—just because I—"

"No." Mac spoke without making eye contact with anyone in the room. "It's my own fault. I didn't let myself see that he was just using me for media exposure, testing the waters for a congressional bid."

"No, she came on to me at New Year's, and I rebuffed her advances—"

Sloan made a face at Will's rewritten account.

"You were just collateral damage," Mac maintained, "I'm obviously the target here.

"Are you both out of your fucking minds?"" Charlie whispered harshly, leaning on Mac's desk and glaring at both of them. "The _show_ is the target. And this—" he pointed at the newspaper, "this is a distraction from what we're trying to do. First, it was Will's dating disasters—"

"I'm a great date," he maintained.

"—Then _yours_. And now it looks like we're playing it fast and loose with ethics here at ACN. Campbell's been on the show, what, five—six, times in the last month—"

"Article says eight—" Sloan pointed out.

" _Whatever_." Mac interrupted them both. "He was on panels. Panels that also usually featured Mike Tapley and Claire Godell, I should mention—"

"But _they_ aren't running for office," Charlie finished. He paused for thought. "Here's what we're going to do. You're both going to go on ACN Morning. They'll ask the questions we need them to ask so we can give the answers we want—"

"No," Will said flatly. "This is _Mac_ , Charlie, you know how annoyingly ethical she is—"

"Thank you—wait, _annoyingly_?"

"It doesn't matter," Charlie countered, turning to Mac. "You're a bold-faced name. Anything you do. How did you not know he was intending—"

Her head dropped. "He never told me. You can't think I would use the show to raise his profile." She exhaled heavily. "He used me."

"Don't assume anything, Mac," Will offered in a calmer tone of voice. "Nobody in his right mind—would risk losing you. He seemed like—a good guy."

There it was, another cryptic observation slipped casually between advice and affirmation. His forbearance made everything she'd done all the more reprehensible.

"We're not playing this game, Charlie." Will scooped the newspaper into the trashcan. "This is News Corp using their gossip pundit to fuck with us."

"News Corp doesn't own _The Daily News_. But it really doesn't matter, because we'll be eaten alive by tabloid insinuations. They're bound to exhume all the old history between you two. Exactly what we don't need at exactly the time we don't need it." Charlie sighed in such a way that made the others quiet and wait for what was obviously coming next. "I had a meeting I never told you guys about. Leona's pissed that you're shooting at Tea Party congressmen and senators she has to do business with. She thinks it may adversely impact AWM's chances at the spectrum auction."

"How pissed?"

"Said she'd fire Mac and me, and put you on morning-side features. You could jockey with Al Roker for spots on the red carpet."

"How could you not tell us about that meeting?"

"I should have," Charlie averred.

"This is a _huge_ line that's being crossed. A _huge_ —how many times in the last six months have I asked if we're all right on the 44th floor?"

"Will, I love you, but you've got clay feet and I needed to keep you in the chair."

"Just feeling the love here." Will rolled his eyes.

"Perhaps we should get back to damage control?" Sloan offered. "I can schedule ACN Morning for Monday—"

"Wait." Mac put up her hand, having reached the obvious conclusion. "I can leave. You can do the same show with another producer."

"The same old cut-and-run strategy, Mac?"

She stared at Will. "That's something you would know better than I."

"Fuck, Mac, how much do you hate having me here?"

"I don't—" She tried to control her breathing. "We're not going to argue this now. You can do the same show without me. We've been trying to do something good with the show, all of us, something more than just—"

"Charlie, make sure Leona knows—" Will pointed to Charlie, Mac, and himself, "—we're a package deal at _News Night_. No one's going—"

At that moment, Jim burst into the room with news of a shooting at a supermarket in Arizona.

oooo

"Mac, get in here with Charlie right now." He sounded furious.

Mac looked around Control, looking to identify the source of Will's pique. "Is everything—"

" _Right now_!"

By the time they hustled to the studio, Will was practically foaming at the mouth. He pointed a finger at Charlie.

"You tell Leona and Reese that if they want me out of this chair, they'd better bring bigger guns than Nina Howard."

"That's exactly what I'll fucking tell them!" He was grinning proudly.

"I'm not fucking around, Charlie!"

"Feet of fucking steel!" Charlie chortled, rubbing his hands together with paternalistic glee.

Will's eyes moved beyond Charlie. "Mac—"

She tried to preempt the inevitable indictment. "I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault—"

Still, she was determined to flay herself for this disaster. "I fucked everything up."

"It's gonna be all right. "

"Back in 30," Maggie reminded them all.

Will tried to recover his gravitas for the remainder of the broadcast. Charlie, meanwhile, pumped his fist in the air and left the studio with an obvious _Fuck with us and see where it gets you_ in his eyes.

Mac hesitated in the corridor outside the studio, finally deciding to return to her office, and not Control. Jim was capable, he could carry the rest of the broadcast. And she needed a minute, needed several minutes, to consider what she'd just said to him, in the emotion of the moment—and what he'd said back.

She had assumed she was being summoned to be castigated. Perhaps rightfully. Certainly publicly. And when he didn't, when he instead threw down the gauntlet to the Lansings and _absolved_ her—

She'd admitted it, her culpability. Acknowledged she was responsible for things as they were now—for estrangement and exile and treacherous journalists and opportunistic lawyer-boyfriends, the whole operatic tragicomedy of their history.

She sat, suddenly feeling disconnected and light-headed. Some niggling thought reminded her that she should feel wounded by Wade's perfidy, but she couldn't summon any emotion on his behalf. She had been a blind fool and she deserved what she got.

But what was going on with Will?

She opened the top drawer of her desk, hand stretching all the way to the back, fingers closing around a small velveteen box—

Forgiveness was a tricky business.


	5. Just One of Those Things

**Just One of Those Things**

"Is this a good moment?"

Drink in hand, Don Keefer peremptorily slid across the booth opposite Mac. "The intern you left on watch said you might be here and I thought perhaps we could—"

Mac dragged her eyes up from her stemmed glass.

"Are you hitting on me?" she asked with the near-comic defiance that indicated possible over-consumption of alcohol.

" _No_." He became flustered and shed his glasses, hastening to snatch up a cocktail napkin with which to polish the lenses. "No, ma'am—"

" _Ma'am_?" That one stung, regardless of her level of inebriation.

"Absolutely not. Actually, Maggie Jordan fixed me up with her roommate and that's been a thing for three days now— _wait_. You're wondering why this. You and me. Here. Now."

"It crossed my mind."

"God, no." He sighed at the ineffectuality of his words, then caught the further unpleasant implication that his vehemence might suggest. "Strictly professional. I just thought perhaps I could provide some input—some direction—"

"Direction? To _my_ show?"

"I'm screwing this all up. But you wanted an economist, and I am one, and I just thought it would be responsible for me to take ownership of the content—"

" _Economics_ content?"

Finally. The conversation was beginning to sound more palatable.

"Yeah. There are some big issues, and I know you didn't recruit me just to parrot Bloomberg every night."

"Is that what you've been doing?"

He felt the thin ice begin to solidify and laughed again, less nervously than before. "A few months ago, I agreed to appear on a panel at the Paley Center called _Is TV News Equipped to Cover the Economy_ —"

"Excellent subject. And what was your conclusion?"

"Television news doesn't know anything about the economy."

" _We_ do economic news," Mac pointed out.

"Badly." He shrugged and smiled again. "Sorry. You give me five minutes a night—"

"You've endorsed the subjects," she accused. "Besides, it's not like we can cover everything."

"Trust me, there's been no danger of that." He caught the barkeep's eye and motioned for another drink. "What I wanted to propose was a series to educate the viewer. Perhaps Will could pitch me some questions based upon the market events of the day. We could begin by explaining the differences between a commercial bank and an investment bank. You know what those are, don't you?"

"Of course." Beat. "No." Mournfully, as if it truly mattered.

"Investment banks are gamblers. Commercial banks are where you have a savings account and a checking account." He eyed her critically, taking in the unfocused sadness of her eyes. Two empty wine glasses stood in close proximity to the one she was currently draining. "On second thought, this might be a bad time. Maybe we should talk about this tomorrow."

She nodded, eyes cast down.

"Can I help you get home? It seems as though you've had a bad day. Like maybe your anchor went catatonic on you again—"

She seemed to fold in on herself just a bit.

"Oh, jeeze. Is he sick? Is there something wrong? Is he, I dunno, is he mad _,_ I mean _angry-mad_ , not _insane-mad_ —" Mercifully, Don's babbling faded and he paused before pitching a cue. "What happened?"

"What happened was I was with a guy for a long time who wasn't half the man that Will is and he dumped me. Later, I started seeing Will."

"Ah. You were involved. The two of you. Together." He thought a moment. "Wait. You're not saying— _three of you_ —"

"Don't be ridiculous." She gave fleeting look of exasperation then dropped her head. "I cheated on the perfect guy with a guy who —"

"Okay. Got it. A guy who wasn't so perfect. So you and Will were— _once_ —and now you _aren't_ anymore. But—if you still want to, and if that other guy is out of the picture now, permanently—I mean, Will is here and he doesn't seem to be holding a grudge, you both seem to get on well in the workplace. So, why can't it be fixed if you want it to be?"

"It can't. There's been too much— _other_ stuff. That moment has passed."

"Well, I'm no expert on relationships—"

"Really? Your fifteen minutes of fame with, in this order, Maggie, Tamara, and Maggie's roommate notwithstanding?"

"Heh, that's just the merlot talking," he excused. "As I said, I'm no expert, and those three ladies might seem to bear out that fact, but February 14th is right around the corner, and if there ever was going to be a moment for reconciliation, that could be it. For _you_ , I mean. You know."

"What's February 14th?"

"Valentine's Day."

"Oh god." She brought both hands up to cradle her head.

"Is there something significant about Valentine's Day?" Don asked, using measured tones. "Was that when you started the affair—"

" _Not an affair_ ," she insisted, raising her voice slightly. "What kind of person do you take me for?"

"—Um, _indiscretion_ with the old boyfriend?"

"Momentary burst of idiocy—but it was just _once_ , you need to understand that, and it had happened much earlier, when Will and I first—"

"Trying to follow this timeline and you're making it hard. So, _later_ , in a commendably stupid move, you—what?—confessed to Will and he broke things off?"

"He _forgave_ me."

Don pushed back in surprise. "Whoa. Not what I was expecting. You'll have to enlighten me how forgiveness is a bad thing?"

"I couldn't bear to have him see me—really _see_ me, for the first time—and every time I looked at him, I just remembered how badly I'd treated him, and—"

" _You_ broke things off—"

"I told him to go."

Don swallowed under the awkwardness of the sudden revelations. He'd started out thinking he could sway the E.P. into giving him some extra time on the show, and now he had been accorded the dubious privilege of an unwanted confession.

"I'm going to say this out loud, just to help me get my head around it," he began. "You goofed up, he forgave you, but you sent him away anyway—and now he's back and—and—I still don't understand, _why can't this be fixed_?"

oooo

"Elliot, we're looking at a feed from Al Jazeera from about six hours ago. Can you describe what we're seeing?"

"He can't describe anything except the hotel room," Maggie muttered. Though usually assigned to the studio floor, tonight she had been rotated into Control to make up for the absent Jim Harper.

Mac turned on her with a scolding glance and shushing sound.

"There's gunfire coming from below our hotel room. It doesn't appear that anyone's been injured, but it is a little hard to tell from where I am." Suddenly, Hirsch's image left the frame.

"Do we still have Elliot?" Jake asked.

"Take it," Mac commanded Will over the IFB.

"If you're just joining us," Will calmly intoned to the camera, "as dawn breaks in Cairo, a crowd estimated to be in the thousands has gathered in Tahrir Square in the Egyptian capital—"

"Get back on the fucking air," Maggie hissed into the satellite phone in her hands, and through it, to Jim Harper, on assignment in Egypt. It had taken nearly two weeks of persistent cajoling before Mac relented and permitted Jim to travel with Elliot Hirsch as the field producer for an international segment.

"—Mubarak resigned after 18 days of unprecedented pro-democracy protests, but in a seventeen minute address, he announced he wouldn't be stepping down. This has infuriated the crowd, which appears to have grown larger and angrier throughout this extraordinary night. We're speaking with ACN's own Elliot Hirsch—"

"No, Elliot's on the balcony singing a song from _Evita_ ," Maggie wise-cracked softly, unable to resist the ironic aside but wary of provoking Mac's continued ire.

 _What the hell was Jim doing and why wasn't he reining in his on-camera talent?_

"He's back," Herb announced with some relief, as Hirsch's face wavered across the feed.

"Sorry, Will, the crowd is surging and spreading, and the army has made a ring around Tahrir Square—"

"Ask him if he knows anything about the protesters heading towards the presidential palace," Mac prompted Will.

"We're getting information about protesters heading towards the presidential palace in Heliopolis—"

"I don't know anything about that," Elliot advised dully.

"That's 'cause you're in the Cairo Radisson—"

Mac whirled on Maggie this time. "Does he look _happy_ about that? I'm as frustrated as you are, Maggie, but I'm not sending an American journalist into that protest."

 _Doesn't look that rough to me,_ Maggie thought but wisely opted not to verbalize.

There was a commotion in Control and Mac toggled her mic with longer instructions than she'd given all night. "Will, we're going to push the commercial break for something that's happening in Wisconsin right now. A small protest group of 75 teachers has corralled Governor Scott Walker inside a newspaper office, spontaneously reacting to a bill Walker pushed through the legislature that would balance the state budget by busting public sector unions, especially teachers, and strip their collective bargaining rights. We'll be switching to that and cutting the feed from Egypt. Tap your pen if you understand."

On the monitor, Will tapped his pen on the desk. "We'll be coming back to you, Elliot, but right now, we want to cut to Madison, Wisconsin, where members of the University's Teaching Assistants Association have created an impromptu demonstration—"

oooo

"What's going on?"

Both Mac and Maggie turned to see Will leaning in the door.

Maggie looked down. Best to let Mac handle this, since she was the disciplining teacher in this _held-after-schoo_ l-scenario.

"We're having a few words about professional comportment during breaking news." But Mac recognized the teaching moment had irretrievably passed. "That's all, Maggie."

She exited, gratefully and speedily, walking around Will, who eased into Control.

"She's earned her cred, Mac."

"I know—she—it just got noisy in here, and she was riding Jim and Elliot harder than was necessary." Mac exhaled forcefully. "I give her her due—but she's got to—learn some patience, you know, show some understanding—"

"And stop riding Jim?"

"Yeah." In a nutshell.

"You're right—absolutely right," he astounded her by saying. "Still—Jim might profit from some of her cues. She's had a few adventures." He crossed his arms. "Are we any closer to having someone on the ground in Cairo? This experiment with Elliot and Jim doesn't seem to be—"

"I've called a staff meeting first thing tomorrow morning. We're eighteen days into this and I'm sick of pulling pool feed from the wires. I've seen the same footage we're using licensed to NBC three times in the last two hours," she ticked off. "We can't cover this from a hotel room."

"It's too dangerous for Elliot," he agreed. "Perhaps for any American. You're thinking about getting a stringer?"

"Our best option right now. We need someone local, someone who can blend in with the crowd." She reached for her folio. "You want to come to the meeting?"

"Sounds like you have it under control." He offered a small smile. "And now I really need to get out of this suit or you'll be chewing out whichever intern is in charge of it. Catch up to you tomorrow, Mac."

oooo

Will's phone rang at 4:50am.

"Will." It was Charlie. "Sorry to make these early morning calls a habit, but something's happened and I need to talk to you. Can I come up?"

"What, you're _here_?"

"Yeah, downstairs. I wanted to call first and make sure you didn't have, er, _company_ —"

"I'm alone, Charlie. _Jesus_. Come on up."

Will replaced his pajama pants with a pair of jeans, then turned on a few lights and padded into the kitchen to fill the coffee maker.

Charlie was at the door in minutes. "Sorry to wake you."

"I was awake," Will said as he swept open the door. "But just so you know, that's pretty unnerving, you skulking in the lobby at five in the morning. I put on some coffee. What's this all about?"

"I got a call about an hour ago. Evidently, in a moment of irrational thinking and complete disregard for their own safety, our men in Cairo decided to venture out to Tahir Square in the middle of the riot."

Will instantly tensed. "What happened?"

"Elliot was roughed up. Broken ribs, broken arm, and evidently enough facial lacerations to keep him off prime time for a couple of weeks. That young producer of his, Harper—"

Will pictured the shaggy haired kid senior producer who usually shadowed MacKenzie. Quietly capable kid—he always seemed like a kid, looking younger than he really was—perhaps a little stodgy in his thinking. Maggie was going to work wonders with him.

"We can't locate him. We've talked to the embassy, but the Egyptian government is in turmoil and no one has the either the time or inclination right now to look for a lost American soul."

Will heard the coffee maker indicate the end of the brew cycle and rose.

Charlie followed him to the kitchen. "I'm here soliciting reinforcements, Will. I've got to go tell Mac and Sloan that the guy they went to bat for and agreed to send into harm's way, is missing."

Will poured two mugs of coffee. "Harper may have just gotten separated from his party and is working his way back."

Charlie raised then lowered his coffee, untouched. "Probably true. Probably no need to worry. _Yet_. But that won't stop Mac from doing it—"

"Because she's Mac."

"No, you idiot. Because of _you_." Charlie pulled back with realization. "No one told you—I mean, you couldn't have guessed—"

"Guessed what?"

"When you were over there—when you came up missing—it affected her—"

"Yeah, I'm sure it was a calamity of equal significance to, say, losing the heel of her Louboutin." Will took a long drink of coffee and made sure to turn his back to Charlie. _Shields up_.

"When did you turn into such an asshole?"

Will's shoulders heaved in a theatrical shrug, but he didn't otherwise respond.

"Listen. It's always easier to leave than to be left. She took it—"

" _Easier to leave than to be left_?" Will spun around. "What the fuck does that mean, Charlie? You remember how this played out, don't you? I was cast off the island, remember?"

"She cast herself off, Will. You left and Mac was— _unmoored_ is the word, I guess. Like there was suddenly no foundation." His tone turned hectoring. "I _know_ she sent you away—but she was never—whatever you're thinking, whatever you've thought for the last two years—you've got it all wrong." Charlie sighed. "Look at me, Will. This is the god's truth. When we got the news that you—that there was a problem—I was the one who had to—and then, later, I was the one they called when she—" He stopped abruptly, catching himself.

"Go on." Will's eyes had narrowed.

Charlie shook his head. "Not important right now. I just came to ask you to stand by when I have to tell Mac about Elliot and Harper. That's all. I thought you might be able to interject some— _hopefulness_ to the situation, given your personal experience," he broke off, a cynical huff escaping. "Help me reassure them until we can get a bead on that kid." He consulted his wristwatch. "I already contacted Blue North and your man is bringing the car around in an hour. You and I are going to brief our producers, then the four of us will be meeting with the Lansings and the AWM corporate wonks to talk through our options."

oooo

"What the hell was Elliot thinking?" Leona raged.

"He was thinking, _Get the story_." Charlie shrugged.

"Really? Not, _I think I'll go outside and let myself be beaten with a rock_?" Reese smiled thinly. "It'll be weeks before we can put him in front of a camera again and we're already stretched thin—"

"That's my baliwick, Reese, let me handle that," Charlie said. "What we're here to talk about is the kid—"

"He's not a kid. He's twenty-seven."

It was the first time MacKenzie had spoken in an hour. Everyone in the room, except Will, turned and looked at her.

Will was slunk low in his chair at the back of the group, his fingers laced across his chest and his eyes tracing the cold rain spattering the windows.

"Whether he's a kid or not, he's _ours_. And if Mubarak wants to throw you in a hole, that's it, game over." Sloan crossed her arms. "We don't have any assets there to call upon? Press pool? The embassy?"

"Holed up tight, just riding out the storm. They'll do what they can working the telephones and their local contacts, but don't expect heroics," Reese said, matter-of-factly. "Hirsch told someone Harper had our satellite phone on him—he's probably sitting tight himself, waiting for an opportunity."

Leona cleared her throat. "When we get this behind us, Charlie, you and I are going to have a conversation about why we're exposing our people to the dangers of foreign reporting when there are stringers and pool reporters—"

Charlie made a dismissive gesture.

"What about a passive ping?" Sloan asked. "Can't we get the sat-phone provider to run a GPS trace to tell us where the phone is?"

Charlie's face lit up. "That's it, that's the kind of brainstorming we need."

"And what are we going to do if it turns out he's in Mubarak's dungeon after all?"

At MacKenzie's second utterance, faces turned again but no one dared speak to her. Another full minute passed before anyone broke the loaded silence.

As Charlie had anticipated, the parallels between Jim and Will had not been lost on Mac. Downstairs, she had absorbed the news quietly when Charlie told her and Sloan of the situation. All the negative possibilities were instantly apparent to her, pressing down on her, stealing her voice, even constricting her breathing. At some point, after his first sentence or two, Charlie's words had devolved into mere sounds, delivered in his usual growl.

 _Elliot roughed up, Jim unaccounted for. Probably fine, just temporarily mislaid._

It wasn't until they got to the 44th floor, to the AWM conference room, that Mac began to think in realistic terms. Jim was just… _gone_. Unaccounted for. Perhaps taken, perhaps swept up in the swirling maelstrom of a crowd, perhaps killed in nationalistic fervor and his body just not identified yet. And there was a numbing sense of déjà vu, that all of this had happened before and the laws of probability suggested a different outcome this time. Probability and odds—she tried to calculate the ratio of Jim's natural intelligence to the deteriorating Egyptian political situation. She knew they couldn't rely on luck alone.

From the outer ring of chairs, Will watched Mac. She had visibly pulled back, massaging the inside of her left wrist through the silk sleeve.

Will felt his phone vibrate and copped a peek. He held it up and mouthed, _Gotta take this_ , to Charlie, bolting to the corridor by the third pulse. The cell was pressed to his ear as he continued on to the elevator landing and punched at the button.

"Elliot—what have you got? When? The Egyptian army? Of course, we expected they would deny official—right—right—stay with me, I'm heading to my office now. What's the name of the fringe group? _Intisar_ —never heard of them. Have they been on our map before? So, what does this fringe group want?"

He exited the elevator on the 23rd floor and strode quickly across the bullpen, his unusually grim demeanor preempting any interruption from staffers.

"A quarter of a million, U.S.? You've got the information on the transfer? I mean, nobody's gonna have to leave a bag of cash on top of a pyramid or anything, right? Yes, I'm certain there's a K & R policy that'll cover this. Transfer to—huh, a commodities trading firm in Dubai? That's new. Look, the legal rep is upstairs with the Lansings right now—I can quickly run this through security, just to make sure it checks out, but we can make this happen almost right away. Give me the account number."

Will jotted the 12 digit sequence onto a legal tablet.

"Yeah. Talk to your people on that end and update me as soon as you hear something. I'll handle Reese and the corporate side."

oooo

There was unusual tension in Control that night. Maggie had re-assigned herself back to the studio floor, figuring that the less Mac saw of her, the less either would be reminded of the missing Jim Harper. As the minutes ticked off prior to the show, she hovered in the darkness of the set, beyond the pool of bright light at the center, where Will sat at the desk, arranging his notes.

"Two minutes in," Herb advised over Maggie's headset in the final break of the show. "Maggie, can you have the lighting tech re-aim the number 3 baby spot? It seems like it's on Will's shoulder."

Maggie tapped the hirsute young man milling nearby and passed along the instruction.

An electronic chirp sounded at the desk and, immediately, Maggie's headset crackled.

"Sixty seconds back and Mac says take that phone away from him and get it off the set," Herb relayed.

Will had answered the call, eying Maggie as she stepped forward, hand extended, doubtless under orders now to confiscate the cell before show time. He gave a short acknowledgement then disconnected and passed the phone to her, holding her eyes for a moment. He cupped the mic on his lapel.

"This wasn't your fault. You didn't give him an order. You gave him permission."

She took the phone and made to withdraw.

"Maggie." His hand was still over his mic. "Go tell Mac he's out."

She blinked, surprise and relief registering simultaneously. "I don't under—"

"Just got word they're wheels up. Elliot's calling Charlie right now. Why don't you let Mac know?"

oooo

Exhilaration was the mood of the bullpen by the time _News Night_ wrapped and threw to D.C. Word of Elliot and Jim's homeward trek had spread widely and an impromptu celebration (which, being impromptu, featured only soft drinks and Cheetos) had broken out. In their enthusiasm, Martin and Kendra even dared to clap Will on the back as he passed through a friendly gauntlet.

MacKenzie leaned against the door to his office.

"Maggie said corporate wired the money and Elliot and Jim are on their way home."

"Yeah."

"Funny, because when Charlie called me, he said that the AWM legal-types were worried about exposure and wouldn't allow it."

"Maybe they changed their minds."

She followed him in. "Corporate didn't wire anything."

"Mac—" he protested, stripping off his tie.

"You did this."

He exhaled heavily and looked down. "He's one of our guys," he shrugged, uncomfortable with having to explain the obvious.

"Thank you, Will."

He looked up at that. He hadn't seen _that_ MacKenzie in a long time, the one who looked at him that way. He couldn't help being inordinately pleased that she was so pleased. And when she moved nearer, wrapping her arms around him, he was so off-balance that it took him three seconds to bring his arms up around her.

"Happy Valentine's Day, Mac."

oooo

"Is Egypt still a country?"

"Yeah, it's just a new one." Sloan looked up at the nerdy economist. "Do you ever wear those things?"

As always, Don was wiping the lenses of his glasses. Then, somewhat sheepishly, he folded them and slid them into his pocket. "They make a good prop. Help me carry off that air of erudition. You know."

"Bet it makes you a real chick magnet."

He gave a short wry laugh. "That's a hoot. My date just canked on me."

"At 8pm on Valentine's night? That's one hard-hearted woman. But have courage, because I don't think you're the only one alone tonight—"

"Are you—"

"Not me. Don't be silly. I'm meeting someone after work. I was referring to—" and her eyes drifted to the separate halves of the valentine heart taped to MacKenzie McHale's office door. "Absolutely nothing between them but air."

"There seems to be less of that than usual," he nudged her.

Across the room, away from the circle of newshounds raucously celebrating the return of the prodigals, _News Night_ 's executive producer and anchor embraced.


	6. Always True to You in My Fashion

**Always True to You, Darling, in My Fashion**

"You're going to die today."

 _Delete._

"Die, baby, die."

 _Delete._

"When we get done with the ragheads, you're next."

 _Delete._

"Today, you die, asshole."

 _Delete._

" _Jew-controlled media death—_ " Will paused in the recitation of his emails. "You know, I can't make head or tail of that sentence. There's no verb. And why would he think a guy named McAvoy is Jewish?"

"These don't bother you at all?" Lonny Church asked, wheeling the big black Escalade into an empty space in front of the AWM tower.

Will slipped the phone back into his bag. "One of these days he's going to be right. He's just playing the same lottery number. But—" he unfastened his seat belt, "it's a lotta years in the future."

"Wait for me," Lonny reprimanded, sensing the usual mood. "Would you please—I'm supposed to— _shit_."

Will popped out the car door unassisted by his security shadow, who raced to catch up from the other side of the vehicle.

A knot of tourists instantly noticed that the man in front of them looked startlingly like the man whose face was plastered on buses and subway platforms. Like that guy on the television every night.

Cell phone cameras came up.

"How about a picture, Mr. McAvoy?"

Lonny had reached Dante's Fifth Circle of Hell ( _Wrath_ ) by now and he threw out an arm to warn the people back. "I'd appreciate it if you would stand back—"

"Can you sign this?"

"Sure." Will took the proffered objects, a Manhattan tour book and a Sharpie.

"Can I tell you something? I watch you every night, and I don't always agree, but I like you."

Will looked up and passed the book back. "I disagree with me sometimes, too."

"McAvoy! McAvoy!"

A man in a hoodie was running down the sidewalk toward them, closing fast. He didn't look like a fan.

"Hey, McAvoy!"

The tourist family's attention bounced between the celebrity in front of them and the vaguely disturbing behavior of the rapidly-approaching man.

"Are you guys from out of town?" Will asked, oblivious to the man shouting at him. "Make sure you get to Radio City Music Hall. The tour is fantastic. Also—"

Lonny grabbed the running man and spun him around so that he collided with the granite-faced side of the building.

"Oh my god," the tourist mother whispered.

"Don't worry about that. He gets paid to do that. You guys gonna see any Broadway shows while you're here?"

From where Lonny had the Hoodie Man pinned to the wall, a string of vulgarities darkened the air. Tourist family pulled a little closer together and watched anxiously.

"You all saw it! You're my witnesses. I was just exercising my free speech and fucking Will McAvoy had his goon beat me up! You saw it!"

"Will you just shut the fuck up?" Lonny worked his cell phone from his pocket and tapped 9-1-1.

Meanwhile, Will leaned in for another selfie with the goggle-eyed tourists. "'Jersey Boys' is pretty popular, if you can get tickets. Try the TKTS booth at Duffy Square. Have a good visit."

Turning to enter the building, Will happened to glance up and notice another person watching him from across the street. He watched the man bring up his hand with the index finger and thumb extended, other fingers closed into the hand. The unmistakable shape of a gun. And although Will couldn't hear the word the man mouthed, owing to the distance and the sidewalk noise and the fact that he had only half his hearing from the get-go, the word on the man's lips was also unmistakable.

 _Bang_.

oooo

Two hours later, after a detour to his own office to shed his jacket and briefcase, then another to the newsroom conference room, where he listened to the first pitch meeting without making comment, Will sauntered into Charlie's office.

"This looks like a meeting."

"You know damned well it is and that we've been waiting for you."

Charlie motioned Will to a chair and indicated the as-yet unidentified suit sitting between Lonny Church and Cesare Maldonado, the security detail assigned to McAvoy and McHale. "Will, this is Scott McPherson, with Blue North's Executive Protection Division. Now, can we start? I have to see Mrs. Lansing at one, and she's going to want an update."

"What's happened?"

"You know what happened. Out on the sidewalk in front of the building."

"What? Autographs for the kids, a picture for the parents." Will tried to keep an innocent look and not meet Lonny's glare.

"Mr. McAvoy," McPherson began, "our primary mission is to shield you, and by extension Atlantis, from unwanted attentions resulting from your position or your celebrity. As a public figure, you may be at risk for assassination, kidnapping, injury, and embarrassment."

"How's the Hoodie Man?"

Lonny's arms were crossed over his chest. "Police booked him but it'll be in-and-out. Four hours before he's back on the street."

"Do I detect a note of cynicism about law enforcement in the city?"

Lonny exhaled and shook his head in lieu of the retort he so obviously wanted to lob back.

"Will, you need to cooperate with all the Blue North operatives. Everything they tell you to do," Charlie scowled.

"The show's been getting threats for, what, a year now? Before I got here, someone was trying to shake down Mac and Jane."

"Yeah, well, Jane's out of the picture now, and the threats against Mac have diminished—"

"That's a good thing, isn't it?"

"Not disappeared, just _diminished_ ," Charlie emphasized. "And it's probably because you've been acting like some human lightning rod and attracting the majority of the negative energy. But this is still a big deal. You need to take this seriously."

Will straightened in his chair and slid his elbows across the table. "Look, guys, I used to be a criminal prosecutor. And I'm telling you that nobody who is serious about killing you sends you an email beforehand to warn you. That's just chaff. Distraction."

"Should I remind you that distraction is often preliminary to an attack? What about the event earlier this morning?" McPherson asked in a tone that clearly indicated he already knew the answer. "That man in the hoodie—"

"Was he armed?"

Lonny paused a moment, then shook his head.

"See? Chance encounter." He remembered the man across the street. _Was that also a chance encounter?_

"Nevertheless, we're upping the game. From now on, your comings-and-goings will be out of the public eye—"

"Charlie—"

Skinner held up his hand. "You don't have the choice. The insurance company has put Mr. McPherson in charge, and he's made some recommendations that we will fully support."

"Wouldn't it make more sense for me just to wear a different disguise every day?" Will deadpanned to an entirely unappreciative audience. "C'mon, Charlie. Don't we have bigger fish to fry than this?"

"Absolutely. But we can fry more than one fish at a time."

oooo

"You wanted to see me?" Jim poked his head through the door to Mac's office.

"Come in. I wanted to talk about the B block." Mac capped her highlighter and let it roll away. "And—" as the door closed behind Jim, she made an abrupt change of subject, "why are you giving her money?"

A month earlier, Jim would have squirmed at the unwelcome personal scrutiny by his boss. He still felt compelled to answer truthfully, although he knew the interrogation was off-base.

"I wasn't _giving_ her money. I was giving her back something she had loaned me."

"One hundred dollars? Jim, if you need money, you know you can always—"

"I don't—" Pushing down the indignation, he looked for tactful words. "When we got word I could go with Elliot, Maggie gave me the hundred dollar bill and told me to bring it back or come back with the story of how I spent it. Some sort of—I dunno, some foreign correspondent tradition or something."

"Oh." Foreign correspondent. That little club of which Mac was not a member.

He leaned forward, earnest. "Mac, I haven't told you how much I appreciate you putting in a word for me and letting me go."

"If I had known what was going to happen, that you were going to run out into the middle of a _coup d'etat_ —"

"Yeah. Maggie gave me an earful for that, too."

Mac studied him critically. For how long had she missed the quiet competence and self-assurance that doubtless had been there all along? Had she been guilty of keeping her prize protégé on too short a leash? Was she jealous of Maggie's influence, unwilling to relinquish her own professional hold on Jim?

"You like her a lot, don't you?"

"Well, I'm not at the stage yet where I'm leaping around singing songs—but, yeah. I like her."

Mac nodded, seemed on the verge of saying something else, but, instead, reached for a sheet of legal paper. "Here's the list of SOTs Will wants for B block and the interview with Santorum's deputy chief-of-staff."

"I'll get right on it," he promised, rising and making for the door.

"Oh—Jim."

"Something else?"

"Yeah. Don't take too long to get to the leaping and singing stage."

oooo

During the break before the final segment of the show, Mac uncharacteristically hurried into the studio and leaned expectantly over the desk.

"Will, what just happened?" she insisted in a low but firm voice.

He didn't look up. "Did something happen?" he asked with calculated disingenuousness.

"You know exactly what I'm talking about. What's wrong with you?"

"I'm fine," he said reflexively, then amending, "I didn't get much sleep last night. I might be having a little bout with insomnia."

"How much is not much?"

"None."

"You're blaming this on being tired?"

At this he finally dragged his eyes up to hers. "I'm not blaming anything on anything, and this wasn't quite the train wreck you're trying to portray. There were inconsistencies in his unwavering support for a candidate who, let's face it, stands in stark opposition to him on purportedly moral grounds. I just thought we should illuminate those inconsistencies. And let's not forget he _asked_ to come on the show, so keep the harangue—"

" _Harangue_? You didn't follow my direction, you didn't let up—you came across as—"

"As what?" He seemed to dare her.

"A bully. A persecutor, not a prosecutor. Adversarial. Beating him up just because you could. He has students and parents and friends and colleagues and you seemed to delight in humiliating him in front of all of them. We don't do ambush journalism here, Will. God—why didn't you just hit him in the head with a shovel?" She exhaled heavily and looked at her watch. "Okay, we're thirty seconds back. Try to follow instructions for the last part of the show."

Adjusting her headset, she departed for the dark sanctuary of Control.

Behind her, in a movement of insubordination noticed only by Maggie Jordan on the floor and Jim Harper in Control, Will McAvoy shifted the interruptible feedback unit from his right ear to his left.

oooo

Immediately after the show, Maggie leaned through the door into Control, where the crew was shutting down equipment.

"Jake, Will wants the lights in the studio left on. He wants to work on notes for tomorrow night's interview with Hizzoner." She pivoted to Jim and Joey. "Hang Chew's?"

They nodded agreement.

MacKenzie was at Herb's technical director's station, trying to recalibrate the genlock of the video inputs, which had been giving them trouble all night long. The problem was already on the job log for the CWA engineer the next morning, but she'd had some personal experience with switchers and phase sequencers, so she thought she might give it a whirl.

A few minutes later, Jim asked, "Anything more tonight, Mac? You know you're welcome to join us."

She looked up from the mixer panel and offered a tolerant smile. "I know. Thanks for saying it. But I ought to hang around and take care of a few things here. See you in the morning."

His rapid exit underscored his anxiousness.

Ten minutes of attempting to verify genlock, however, made her realize her experience was hopelessly outdated. The tri-level sync needed for High Definition images really required a proper engineer for signal tracing.

She sighed and rolled the chair back from the panel. When she glanced up, she saw Will was still at his desk, intently studying and making notes to the five by seven cards with questions and pertinent factoids for the interview. He was alone.

This was a good moment. Serendipitous.

She put her headset back on and toggled the mic.

"Will? I'm sorry to—and you don't have to—but, well, everyone's gone but us—and I wanted to say something—it's a little easier this way—for me. This isn't about work, but you've probably guessed that by now, given this preamble."

Only one of the bank of screens still showed Will, the others having been powered down by the departing crew. On it, Will pushed back in his chair, in a pensive pose.

She turned her back to the screen, illogically feeling scrutinized by merely facing his image.

"You don't have to say anything—in fact, I'd rather you humored me and just— _listen_. Please."

"I've been trying to gather my courage to talk to you about—well, the past, _our_ past, but it has taken me—until now. And I know you must think it was easy to be so cold, but it wasn't. It has been—very hard."

"But before I even get started, I wanted to thank you again for what you did for Jim. He's been the most loyal and dedicated of all the intern-accolytes passing through my newsroom—the only one I've been able to hang onto, really. And for a brief time, he was lost. You changed that outcome with the audacity and generosity of spirit that are so typically you. We were all lucky you were here." She paused. "Given my churlishness since your return, I'll bet you're surprised to hear that."

"But gratitude is not what this is about, is it? I know that you've never understood why I—behaved as I did. It was a stupid childish action from a woman not ordinarily given to acting thoughtlessly and impulsively. You were so perfect and I was so unworthy of you."

"I hate—I hate that I hurt you. I hurt us, I know that, but I hurt you first. I hate that I so unthinkingly destroyed something precious between us for the sake of—trying first to recover my pride and then to clear my conscience."

She huffed a short laugh, a sound more wretched than wry or amused. "That didn't work, of course. As it turned out, unburdening myself just gave me a new way to hurt you. Unthinkingly. Again."

Turning, she caught a glimpse of Will on the screen. He was looking down at the desk.

"Will, I hated the way you still looked at me—with love and sadness and the offer of something I was unworthy of—forgiveness. God, I hated looking at you, because it reminded me what an awful person I was to have caused such harm. Such irretrievable, grievous damage. That was why I sent you away. Because the knowledge of what I'd done was choking all the air from me and I just couldn't stand that you could still look at me _that way_. Your pardon was my indictment."

"For two years I've just wallowed in the pain and the guilt, because feeling bad somehow made me feel better." One side of her mouth hitched up. "That's pathological, I know. Therapy gives you a whole new vocabulary. Like, _self-sabotage_ , another term with which I've become well-acquainted. That means, trying to assign a motive to something otherwise inexplicable."

"There was a moment—when despair outweighed judgment—any sense of my responsibility to—and after Charlie told me you—" She swallowed, forcing back the anguish raised by the memory. _Need to get through this, mustn't squander the moment._

"You were only there because I sent you away. Will, I am so very, very sorry for that. This is _your_ place, and you deserved so much better. Certainly better than I've given since you've been back."

She used the back of her hand to catch a trickle on one cheek.

"You did everything right—I did everything wrong. I've needed to say that. I should have had the courage to tell you to your face, but we both know I've always been the moral coward of the two of us. Also—we still have to work together. I couldn't imagine how awkward this could be if you—not that I would blame you if you did—"

"But, Will—if you could—you see, I've never stopped—and—"

For the declaration, for the real moment of truth, she glanced up at the monitor.

In the pool of bright light, Will's chair was pushed flush to the desk. Empty.


	7. Down in the Depths

**Down in the Depths**

 _23 February 2009_

 **HELMAND AFGHANISTAN (Reuters) - Two unnamed journalists employed by CNN International (CNNI) disappeared and were presumed abducted today near a Taliban checkpoint in the Sangin Valley. While the journalists have not been officially identified, consistent with the "news blackout" often observed by news agencies regarding kidnapped journalists, an internal message by CNNI Senior Vice President Thaddeus Lowe confirmed the event and** **instructed employees not to comment…**

oooo

 _Be patient._

Will kept thinking this would be cleared up soon. The chieftain in charge of this particular band of tribal militia would show up and give the word to release them. They might be roughed up a bit, but the scare was designed to reinforce the leader's status, not really hurt the American journalist and his Afghan fixer.

He had been blindfolded, although the blindfold was more like a hood and stank of something old and rancid, and his hands were secured in front of him with a zip-tie. They had been transported in the back of a truck—Will had felt the cold, wet corrugated metal of the truck bed beneath him—then, upon arrival at a place he couldn't see, pushed onto a cold, wet cement floor.

There were other voices, preemptory and challenging, but they were slightly removed, as if they came from another room. Someone wheezed heavily beside him, and Will assumed it was Rahim; they hadn't spoken to each other in hours, had been commanded not to, and neither of them dared incite their abductors.

And that was another reason why Will thought this was just a waiting game. Surely, some over-zealous, low-level clowns had shown the wrong kind of initiative in snatching them, and once this matter was elevated to the proper chieftain or his deputy, everything would be put right and they would be released.

He didn't want to consider any of the other possibilities that were trying to infiltrate his mind. ( _Roxana Saberi, held 101 days; David Rohde, held 8 months; Terry Anderson, held 7 years—don't even go there.._.) Focus on the minute, that's what the Centurion hostile environment training had stressed. Controlling the inevitable imaginings of torture and worse would prevent panic and reduce fear. So Will tried to focus on something positive and familiar, something requiring concentration.

 _Trying to remember the positions of the E Aeolian mode on the guitar fretboard._

That would do for a start.

Another round of loud voices outside interrupted his thoughts and he flexed his hands, trying to improve circulation. The zip-tie was too tight, but he'd hold the complaint for now, not wanting to provoke his hosts. He leaned back against the cinderblock wall and finally dozed, the inevitable adrenal crash of hours spent keyed up.

Suddenly, there was a sharp thwacking sound, and more voices , louder and nearer, and the shuffle of footsteps. He was groggy, still trying to differentiate dream from memory. It had been just a flash, but it had seemed as though _she_ —

Arms pulled him roughly to his feet and his pockets were rifled. He tried to remember the contents: passport and CNNI credentials, his phone, a wallet with about $20 of local currency, cigarettes and lighter, and a thumb drive.

Finally, the hood was ripped from him and he blinked in the bright light of a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling.

One of his captors held a still camera.

A visibly agitated Rahim turned to Will. "He says to say your name and that your government must leave this country."

 _Ah. That was a relief_. It indicated he was regarded as a hostage, either for propaganda or ransom, but it implied _value_. Most importantly, it suggested he was unlikely to be summarily executed.

Will complied, but it was hard to form words, even those as familiar as his own name, because his mouth was so dry.

Once the exercise was completed, the hood was replaced over his head. There was conversation between the other men.

"Don't make noise. No talk." It was obvious he was being addressed now.

As the shamble of footsteps receded, Will tried to process the encounter.

There was proof of life now. Once CNNI got the video, negotiations could begin.

He hoped CNNI wasn't in a cost-saving mode. Ransom negotiations weren't a place for economy, for anything other than simply, "How much?" and then assembling the cash. No one wanted to be bargained over. And he didn't want to sacrifice fingers or ears for some grim counter-offer by his captors.

He appreciated the irony of being commodified in this manner, but he was unsure whether his mild celebrity as an on-camera correspondent would prove an asset. Might nudge the ransom toward the stratosphere.

Okay, bad news for CNNI.

Some period of time later, they were moved again. Thrown in the back of a truck, as before, and driven over a rough road. Will tried to think how to keep track of the time, which might help him calculate distance, but could only fall back on _one-one-thousand_ , and that seemed kind of pointless after a very short time. Anyway, there was no way for him to gauge direction, a crucial element to knowing where he was being taken.

When they got to the new place, wherever it was, their previous captors no longer seemed to be in charge; there were new voices. Will was made to stumble up bare concrete stairs to another room. He heard a jingle of chain, felt a tug, then his hood was removed again. A chain was wrapped around his ankle, and the eight foot lead terminated at the wall of a windowless, doorless room.

The zip-tie around his hands was roughly cut off and he began massaging his wrists, willing away the painful tingle of pins and needles.

He was disturbed that Rahim was no longer with him and he was unsure for whom that boded more ill. The new captors didn't seem particularly interested in his needs. He'd had no water or food since being taken at the checkpoint and this didn't seem a very hospitable stop. At least the floor was dry, but it was still chilly and there was no bedding, just a tattered blanket wadded up in a corner. Weary, but his mind still racing, he dropped into a crouch against the wall of the small, almost perfectly square room.

oooo

At Charlie's insistence, Sloan had seen MacKenzie home.

Mac had been quiet, altogether _too_ quiet, ever since Charlie had called them all together that morning to warn them of a back channels report about McAvoy. _Uncertain_ , Charlie had emphasized, then he had been so damned solicitous ( _because he'd never bought any of the crap excuses Mac had offered for the broken engagement_ ), proposing ridiculous and far-fetched scenarios of mistaken identity, impossible heroics, and last minute sanctuary.

It was clear Charlie believed the worst.

And equally clear that Mac was in no way prepared for the worst, despite trying to hold her emotions in check.

So Sloan had lingered at Mac's place from a sense of responsibility, before finally sensing the utter awkwardness of being there, of studying Mac like some exotic butterfly.

She needed to give Mac privacy. Allow her the dignity to handle the news about McAvoy in her own way, on her own schedule.

So Sloan made her promise to get some sleep and then reaffirmed that they would see each other in the morning.

Mac was relieved by Sloan's departure. She knew it was the last line cast off.

She selected some music and made a cup of tea. Then, she turned off the lights, allowing the garish neon of Times Square to flood the room, and turned off the phone, which had been ringing at regular intervals. She sat for a very long time, drinking the tea and watching light and shadow chase around the room.

Her mistakes were so apparent now. Falling for Brian's line, allowing the frisson of seduction to momentarily obscure the inevitable consequences. Confessing to Will—which at first seemed the honorable thing to do, and also the most personally painful thing to do. She'd actually expected the pain to be cleansing in some way.

It hadn't been, of course. Merely led to another cycle of destruction and despair.

So, although there were pills in the cabinet, this really needed to _hurt_. Because when you irretrievably lose the center of your life, when you understand that nothing you can ever do will make things right again, you should _feel_ it.

Surprisingly, the first cut didn't hurt at all. Not that deep because the first one should be experimental. She wasn't exactly sure how much was needed and how much would be overkill.

 _Overkill_.

That was funny.

So little had seemed funny lately. Bitterly ironic, yes. But it took a pun, mere misplaced word association, to put some wit into this situation. _This black comedy of errors_.

The gallows humor faded. Might as well do this right.

Then she put the blade back to her wrist and took a breath and tried to hold her hand steady for a deep, even, really efficacious cut.

And it _did_ hurt this time. Well, not hurt, exactly—more like banging your crazy bone. An intensely unpleasant tingle.

Now, just the waiting.

oooo

Three nights later, a bright flash, eerily detached from sound, woke him. The concussion arrived a millisecond later, stirring the fine grit in his tiny cell, and the sound came last, the deepest roll of thunder Will had ever heard.

Grayish smoke roiled through the air and Will coughed at the acrid smell. He stayed on the floor, uncertain whether the events indicated a change in the better for his situation.

 _Best to sit tight._

From outside came a muffled _whap-whap_ of slugs on metal. He assumed it was bullets hitting vehicles outside. He heard a few shouts but he couldn't distinguish identifiable words—his understanding of Pashto and Dari was ludicrously limited, given his present situation.

Two bright lights bobbed along the corridor then turned into his cell, blinding him. Will squinted and threw up an arm in front of his face to shield the glare.

"You McAvoy?"

oooo

"Fuck, Mac—"

She felt mild surprise. Jim wasn't supposed to be here—

She saw Sloan was there, too, speaking into her phone, a sharp tone of panic raising the timbre of her voice.

"I wanted—before anyone—"

"Shut up. Shut up! God, Mac, what did you—" He cast a glance to Sloan and got the confirmation he sought. "We're going to push this back—"

"Don't—"

"Shut up!"

She recognized he was screaming at her. Why was he so angry?

"They're on their way—stay with me, give us five minutes." He had wrapped a towel around her wrist and held it up, but the blood still ran down her arm.

Sloan pressed a blanket on her and Mac was suddenly aware of how cold it had gotten. Aware that interior lights were on now, not just the residual light from outside. Aware that the music was still playing, an incongruous accompaniment to this pathetic little drama.

She closed her eyes, knowing she had screwed up again, that there was shame and hurt in forcing your friends to tip you back across the fulcrum, yank you back from death's tender caress.

oooo

 _28 February 2009_

 **KANDAHAR AFGHANISTAN (AP) – Today, a unit of the U.S. Navy Special Warfare Development Group (SEALs) conducted a pre-dawn raid at a** **Taliban safe house near Karz, where it had been suspected western hostages were being held. U.S. forces killed three militiamen and one civilian in the assault. They subsequently located and rescued an unidentified American soldier who had been captured in Sangin two weeks ago, as well as CNNI correspondent Will McAvoy, abducted three days earlier. An Afghani journalist abducted with McAvoy was badly wounded in the crossfire and died of his injuries before he could be evacuated...**


	8. Well, Did You Evah? What a Swell Party--

**Well, Did You Evah! What a Swell Party…**

"Everyone—" Mac paused and waited for Jim to bellow a reinforcing echo of her call. "Everyone, Will wants to say a few words—"

"I really don't." He exhaled loudly, nabbed. "But here you all are in my apartment. _Socializing_." He looked around the room. "Coworkers—friends—family—in my apartment. Just like in my nightmares."

He rolled his eyes and cleared his throat, struggling to adopt a more gracious tone. "This is a party to celebrate the one year and one week anniversary of what we used to call _News Night_ 2.0—although I think we're up to about _News Night_ 174.0 by now. But I'm confident we're gonna get it right one of these days. So have a good time at the party. And please, please know, from the bottom of my heart, that I'm not gonna think it's rude if you leave early."

He looked over to MacKenzie. "Good?"

"Goose bumps."

He flipped a hand at the assembled people in the room. "Okay. Resume being here."

oooo

Later, in the kitchen, Will gestured at the Tupperware container. "Kaylee—thank you and thank your friend in L.A. for getting this for me."

"He said they're pretty strong, so you should probably just break off a quarter and eat that. At least, at first," she advised.

Neal leaned forward, conspiratorially. "And when this guy says they're strong, they're _strong_."

"I ate two."

Neal and Kaylee exchanged a look before she soothed, "Well, enjoy yourself and we'll see you in 12 to 14 hours."

"No, it's fine," Will insisted, putting both hands out in front and resting them on the counter. "I have incredibly high tolerance. That's why I can't feel the Vicodin."

"You took Vicodin and then ate two cookies?" Neal looked decidedly goggle-eyed.

"Mm-hmm."

Again, Kaylee rushed with another reassuring coo. "He's fine," to Neal, then, "You're fine," to Will, who looked as though he didn't need her benediction. "Just stay away from anything dangerous. Electricity. You know— _outside_."

"I'm fine. Really. I don't feel it at all."

"You will," she added knowingly.

"My body has the physical tolerance of ten men. Doctors have called me a medical marvel."

"Yeah," Neal breathed. "Maybe you should just lie down."

oooo

Twenty minutes later, Maggie relieved Jim of the Guitar Hero _pseudo-guitar_ with the observation, "That was interesting."

"Was that a dig?"

"Not at all." She handed the game device to Kaylee's next appointed victim. "Although I've notified Green Day you can't make the tour this year."

"Was that a dig wrapped in a metaphor?"

She shrugged and slipped her hands into her jeans with a self-satisfied smile.

"Once again—reminding you I can play _actual_ guitar." Jim looked around. "In fact, I think I'll go find Will and see if I—"

"Determined to prove it now, aren't you? Well, you go on, I'll grab some snacks and catch up. And, oh, by the way—if Will starts playing hootenanny music, he's probably three sheets to the wind."

" _Hootenanny_?"

"Yeah—you'll know it when you hear it. The kind of stuff that never should have left the farm."

Still uncertain of her meaning, Jim made his way into the other room, sliding his phone out for a furtive look-see along the way. He nearly ran into Mac and Charlie standing with Elliot and Sloan.

"I just got a strange text from Mike Tapley."

Mac traded a loaded look with Charlie. "So did I."

"It said, 'I'm available. Call me.'"

"Why is he hitting on both of us?"

"A lonely man—" Sloan observed, sagely, giving her glass of merlot an indecent swirl.

"Mac." Charlie was surprised at having to exert himself as the voice of reason in this exchange. "He's not hitting on either one of you. He's saying he's available to go on the air."

All four of them traded glances.

"' _Wait for it,_ ' Charlie echoed from the call he'd taken earlier. He set his jaw. "I need to make a few phone calls," he said, stepping away.

oooo

"Is this terrace taken?"

Mac turned to see Will sliding the glass door closed and stepping onto the small balcony a few feet away from her.

She forced a weak smile. "I can just—"

"Stay." He shrugged and smiled back. "Please. I didn't mean to chase you off." He leaned at the railing. "It's gotten cloudy."

"And a little chilly. I'd really better go in—"

"Mac." He reached out but stopped inches short of actually touching her. "I haven't seen much of you for two, three weeks now, and that's seemed peculiar since we work about twenty feet away from each other." Another shrug. "What gives?"

She locked her arms in front of her in an unmistakably defensive stance. "You've made it clear that you weren't interested in—an explanation—anything I might have to say—"

"I must have missed something." He cocked his head. "We haven't talked in weeks beyond a few instructions while I've been on the air. Usually delivered with attitude, too, I might add. I don't know what you think has been made _clear_ , but it isn't very—not to me."

"Oh, Will," she said with a sad shake of the head. "You know very well what I'm talking about. I opened my heart three weeks ago and you just—"

" _Opened_?—not a clue, Mac. I seriously don't have a clue what you mean." He wet his lips. "Tell me now."

She locked both hands onto the terrace railing, looking out at the city lights so he couldn't read her expression. Her thoughts were racing.

Beside her, he sighed audibly.

"We're always out of sync, Kenz. I hate it but I'm damned if I can figure out what to do about it."

She froze at the long-disused endearment.

"In my mind, I keep hearing what Charlie told me – that it's always easier to leave than to be left. Except it wasn't—for me. It was _never_ easy to leave you, Mac. I wanted to make it easier for you, but sometimes I'm not sure that I did, even though it was what you said you wanted. I think—I think it may have been hard for you, too." He paused and rubbed at the back of his neck, then turned to face her, away from the cityscape. "You know, I sit out here every night and look at this view—"

"It's a nice one," she allowed, suddenly anxious to keep the conversation flowing forward, prevent any further exhumation of their relationship.

"I've begun to hate it. It just seems to taunt me—"

"You're still having problems sleeping?"

"Yeah. There's always noise in my head—"

"You really need to see a doctor, Will."

"Maybe. Still trying the self-medication route." His eyes flicked to the glass door and back, then, in an abrupt non sequitur, he announced. "I think I saw pizza in there. _Are you hungry have you eaten anything_?" The last was delivered as one run-on sentence, without pause or punctuation.

Relieved, if slightly puzzled, by the change of subject, she shook her head. "I had a biscuit earlier—"

"Biscuit?"

"Tasted a bit rank—"

"You had one of the cookies Kaylee brought?"

Mac leaned forward to confide, "She's _not_ a very good baker."

"Fuck, Mac. You're high." He started laughing, a soft but reckless sound that belied his own sobriety.

"I am not," she batted back, adopting an injured tone.

But, inside, her mind was flashing, _Information overload._ Will's slip in using a private diminutive. Charlie's words. And— _weed in the biscuits_?

The glass door slid open and Charlie motioned them in.

"Get in here. You both need to hear this." He frowned at them briefly before turning and clearing his throat. "Everybody—everybody—hey, _quiet down_. Will, turn off the music."

"Sure. Martin, throw me the remote."

The tiny remote sailed past Will, through the still-open door to the terrace. Gary, alarmed for passersby below, ran to look over the railing then raised a steadying hand.

"It's okay."

Mercifully, someone finally killed the volume the old-fashioned way.

Now that he had everyone's attention again, Charlie resumed. "The president's speaking in 90 minutes on a matter of national security. That's all we know right now and I want to know a lot more than that. Let's get to work, people."

"Four people to a cab," Mac had the presence of mind to call out to the assemblage. "Jim, call down to the doorman, make sure he knows the lift goes just up and down, no stops."

"I'm on it."

Across the room, she made eye contact with Lonny, who was already in motion.

"I'm bringing the car around," he shouted over the voices, stabbing a finger in Will's direction. "Stand in the lobby—do not go out on the sidewalk."

Will nodded with obvious exasperation, then craned to look back at the ersatz buffet on the kitchen counter. _Did he have time to grab a quick slice_ —?

Mac followed him, the obvious urgency of the situation diminished by a strange gentle numbness. "It's going to take forever this way. How many lifts in the building?"

He flipped pizza box lids open, surveying the contents. "Technically, two, but the other's just a small service elevator and it's kind of wonky. The Otis man is out here every other week to work on it."

She considered. "Still, we need to be in the next car."

He began picking the choice parts off a slice of pizza and popping them in his mouth. Sliced black olives—clumps of sausage—pepperoni discs. "Sure. Hey, did I tell you I have an idea about the debate?"

"Debate?"

"GOP presidential candidates. ACN's got a shot at moderating one of the debates."

"Why didn't I know about that?"

He grinned. "I don't know, Mac. Why didn't you?"

"You're an idiot. Wait—save me that," she indicated the mushroom slice he held up.

Across the room, Elliot collared Charlie in mid-stride.

"What do you think it is?" Elliot pressed, neatly dodging Sloan as she executed an intercept course.

"It could be Gaddafi," Charlie said, obviously still turning the possibilities over in his head. "It could be Iran. Perhaps the Iranians have fired on a ship in the Gulf. Also—Jimmy Carter just got back from North Korea—maybe he learned something about their nuclear progress or missile delivery program—"

More loaded glances were exchanged.

Elliot persisted. "But what do _you_ think it is?"

Charlie blurted, "I think we got bin Laden." He was surprised to hear himself say it out loud. It was so temptingly obvious that he was still reluctant to believe it.

Don Keefer, who had spent a portion of the evening in the unsuccessful pursuit of a new intern, now joined them. "What's going on?"

"There's breaking news and we don't know what it is, but the president's gonna go on TV at 10:30."

"You don't know what it is?"

"No."

"So we could be under attack?" Don asked, pushing his glasses up again and keying off the last bit of conversation he'd overheard.

"Unlikely but not off the table," Charlie said, impatiently. "Look, you two—" he indicated Sloan and Elliot, "Will and Mac were out on the terrace together—"

"And he wasn't pushed over?" Sloan couldn't resist the crack.

Charlie glared and continued as if he hadn't been interrupted. "—And I don't know what they were doing out there except that they both look a little glassy-eyed." He paused a moment to allow the ramifications to sink in. "So I want you two to be prepared to break this story. Get to the studio, get your crew together—this is all hands on deck, you read me?"

They nodded understanding as Charlie wedged himself into the packed elevator and the doors closed. Reflexively, Sloan looked at her watch, trying to gauge how long they had to wait until the car returned. Elliot pushed the elevator's call button again and rolled his eyes up to the display indicating the elevator's current floor.

"Hey, guys," Don said, returning from an unannounced tour of the floor beyond Will's door. "I think I saw a freight elevator around the corner—"

"Lead on," Sloan commanded.

oooo

Lonny had the Escalade at the curb when Will and Mac finally exited the building. A light rain was falling and Mac slid in the back seat even as Will took the passenger seat across from the driver.

"How long does it take to get the studio warmed up?"

"You should know this, Will, you've done this often enough."

"Are you talking to D.C.?"

"They've already started coverage—"

"Of what?"

"A live shot of the White House."

"Tell them New York's running this and they don't say a word."

She nodded, wearily. "They know. And if they've forgotten, I'll remind them."

Lonny eased into into traffic.

"How long do we have?"

"The president speaks in 45 minutes."

Lonny leaned into the rear view mirror to catch Mac's eye. "I'll get you there, just hang tight."

"He—the president-he's breaking into the networks, too. That's Desperate Housewives, Celebrity Apprentice, Brothers and Sisters—so there's going to be a lot of money in ad givebacks."

"Meaning, this can't wait till the morning," Will nodded, following the logic chain. "It's bin Laden, Mac."

"No." She shook her head to clear it of the comfortable haze that had settled in. "We _want_ it to be bin Laden. Let's not let the wish be the fact."

Lonny slapped the steering wheel in frustration and muttered something low that Mac couldn't quite catch. A sea of red brake lights stretched before them and cars were stopped on either side of the Escalade.

"We're stopped," Mac said, looking at the backup.

"Thank God we're not in the middle of breaking news," Will observed wryly, looking up from his cell phone. "What are we, 22 blocks away?"

"I'm gonna get you there," Lonny promised in a sing-songy tone.

"I can run fast—"

Lonny shot Will a reproving glance. "You can't get out of the car without me." Beat. "I see you thinking about it." Another beat. "Do. Not. Do. It."

Will pocketed his cell.

"What are you putting that in your pocket for?"

From the backseat, Mac could hear the seat belt release and she became alarmed. "Will—?"

"Get back here! You are not safe out here! McAvoy, get back!"

By the time Lonny's burst of words hit the air, the passenger door had popped open and closed. Two seconds later, as Lonny fumbled with his own seat belt, the back passenger door opened and Will slid in.

" _Motherfucker_!" Lonny fumed from the front.

"You didn't really think I was just going to run 22 blocks, did you?" Will wore a shit-eating grin. "I mean, I'm fast, but not The Flash. I just thought I'd talk to Mac for a bit while we wait." He looked all around the back of the vehicle and patted the smooth leather backs of the front seats, obviously searching for something. "You got something—some kind of—you know, some privacy screen or something?"

"This is a specially reinforced vehicle designed for executive protection. It _isn't_ designed for private _tete-a-tetes_ in the back seat!" Lonny fumed.

Will thought for a moment before rummaging in his jacket pocket. "Here," he said, extending earbuds.

The other man took them and, with a huff of exasperation, put them in his ears.

"Traffic's beginning to move a bit," Mac pointed out in an attempt to distract Will.

"Hmm? Oh yeah." He paused. "Mac, you know—I might be a little—wasted—right now—"

Hypocritically, she dismissed her own buzz and immediately thought it would be impossible to put Will on the air if he was truly—

"But—and maybe it's just because I am, but this is the thing, Mac. I understand I was a choice to you. Only—you were never a choice to me."

His words made her press back into her seat.

"Will—"

In the ambient light, he looked so earnest and desperate. "I won't say that except for what you did wrong, you did everything right. Because, _and you should really trust me on this_ , you did everything wrong. _Everything_. But give me some signal, just something to go on—I've been going crazy—I can't sleep and I know it's because I've left something unfinished—and if there's a chance, a remote chance—tell me now—"

Her head was suddenly crowded with thoughts that couldn't make it to her lips. Her guilty awareness that his feelings had never changed, and the perverse pleasure that realization gave her. His standing offer of the forgiveness she didn't deserve. Her shame at knowing that the integrity of her love had been tested and she had failed miserably, had proven herself selfish in the face of Will's selflessness.

A chirping sound burst from Will's jacket, shaking his focus.

She seized upon the moment. "Your BlackBerry—look at your BlackBerry."

He pulled it out and stared at it stupidly.

"Press the buttons!"

Two beats elapsed before he looked up with a slow smile.

"Okay, not tonight, but in days to come, you'll look back and think that this moment was funny." He held up the device. "It's from 20 minutes ago. It's says, 'OBL reportable. Knock 'em dead just like we did."

"Who's it from?"

"Joe Biden. We used to play softball together when he was in the Senate. He was fast, too, but not much coordination—"

As if on cue, Lonny pulled to the curb in front of the AWM tower. Tonight surely warranted exception to the policy of hidden comings-and-goings.

She shoved Will from the vehicle. "Get on the air!"

oooo

Charlie Skinner was pacing the bullpen when Will and Mac tumbled from the elevator. "Thank God. The White House has moved the announcement back another fifteen minutes."

Mac dropped her coat and purse on someone's desk and began an aria of commands. "Kendra, have you got the obit package for bin Laden? Good. Get Joey the information so he can build the graphics. Jim, where's Tapley and our National Security guys?"

Will just stood blankly watching the newsroom activity.

Charlie elbowed Jim. "What's wrong with him?"

"Uh—nothing."

"Then get him into a suit. And if you've got any Visine, use it!"

Twenty minutes later, under the brilliant studio lights, Will heard the countdown and saw the red light glow.

"Good evening, from New York City, I'm Will McAvoy. ACN is now able to report that for the first time in almost three decades, the world has no reason to fear Osama bin Laden. In just a moment, in a live address to the nation, the president will announce that U.S. Special Forces tonight killed the leader of al-Qaeda and the mastermind behind the deadly attacks of September 11th, 2001. We were transformed that morning into a different nation, more fearful and so, of course, more hostile. And while nothing can bring back the souls lost on that terrible morning, let tonight serve as a reminder that throughout our history, America's darkest days have always been followed by its finest hours. Here now, from the East Room of the White House, the President of the United States."

oooo

The mood after the telecast was unusually subdued for breaking news, any gladness and relief dampened by memory of the September morning. Charlie watched the broadcast from Control with Mac and Jim and the crew, and, at its conclusion, went to the studio, where he wordlessly pumped Will's hand, paused as if to say something, then thought better of it and simply walked away.

Mac dithered in Control for as long as she dared, before finally gathering her folio and notes and heading to her office. She could see the light was on in Will's office, so, after wrestling with it for a few more minutes, she walked over and looked in.

Minus jacket and tie, with the top button of his shirt undone, he was sitting on the small sofa, watching the bank of four screens.

"Good show."

He noticed her. "Thanks. You, too."

She screwed up her courage and took a breath. "You know—about what you said earlier tonight—Charlie had some words for me once, as well."

"Oh?"

 _Charlie had been as angry as she'd ever seen him, his voice gruff and indignant but his eyes full of dammed up anguish as he'd administered that blistering dressing down at the hospital. "Our lives are never our own to take. You had no right to make that choice, MacKenzie, and you never will. You have a meaning to the whole."_

Ahem. She'd better paraphrase.

"He told me we're not in control of our own lives." It was true enough to the spirit of what Charlie had said, anyway, without begging additional questions. Also, it seemed generic enough to be made to fit whatever was between her and Will now.

Will rose. "All that stuff I was saying earlier, in the car—"

 _Here it comes. He's going to take it all back, blame it on the weed—_

"I was trying—what I wanted was—" He took a tentative step forward, towards her. "I'm not made of stone, Kenz—I want to kiss you right now. And not some chaste nighty-night thing—a real kiss, like we used—"

Somewhere inside, a dam opened and surprise and relief and gratitude flooded her. She gasped at the sudden headiness then closed the distance between them. He wound her into his arms, pressing kisses to her lips even when they moved with mumbled apologies and tiny half-cries of regret at time lost.

Was he still high? How much of this vulnerability and naked emotion was to be blamed on the drugs and the exhilaration of just having broken the biggest story of the year?

Was she still high? Were the urgent breaths and involuntary tremors just nerves, an exhausting day, a troubling night?

"Come home with me, Kenz," he breathed into her ear. "Please? I still love you so much—I need you with me tonight—"

She pushed back and regarded his blue eyes, wide with want and hope, and his tousled hair, disarranged by her hands pushing through it. "You change while I grab my coat and purse. I'll be back in two minutes."

He caught one of her hands as she turned, kissing her fingers as they slipped through his own. "I still love you—I'm so glad to finally say that."

"Two minutes," she promised, hurrying out and to her office. She rushed to close the open apps on her computer and put the monitor in sleep mode. She checked her cell—a message from Sloan that could wait until morning—then found the purse and jacket she'd come for. Dousing the lights, she walked across the empty bullpen back to Will's office.

He was stretched out on the sofa, his face smashed into a deep leather cushion, asleep.

So. There would be time enough for one—or both—of them to come to their senses.


	9. Even Educated Fleas Do It

**Even Educated Fleas Do It**

By the time her _security-escort-cum-driver_ Cesare dropped her off in the underground garage of the AWM tower, MacKenzie had considered what she assumed was every possible scenario at work this morning.

The one she thought most likely, was that Will simply wouldn't remember anything that had passed between them last night, the marijuana and Vicodin and extreme fatigue combining for a blissfully ignorant amnesia.

The second possibility was total recall—and attendant awkwardness. Would he regret his candor and opening himself up like that to the woman who'd hurt him so badly before?

A third scenario combined the other two: Will would remember but claim he didn't, allowing him to walk back everything with a minimum of awkwardness.

The lift's bell sounded, indicating the 23rd floor. She shifted her folio to the other arm, took a deep breath, and stepped out to the landing, right into Will.

"We need to talk," he said, pushing her back into the elevator and jabbing at the button for the lobby.

"We do, but—"

"We're about to be over-taken by events—something the Lansings set up, some truly misguided commemoration of _News Night_ 2.0—but I can't go into that now—so I need to know—I really have to know _right now_ —if I hadn't fallen asleep last night—"

"Can't we hold this for later?"

"No. We've got to get this straightened out, Mac."

She tapped her watch and said, indulgently, "I've got a pitch meeting in fifteen minutes—and we both still have a show tonight, you know."

The elevator reached the lobby and Will propelled her forward. "The show can wait a few hours. I'm not on until eight. Mac, _we have to talk_."

On the sidewalk, he disregarded the stares of passersby who parted for them. A taxi was already at the curb, having just disgorged a passenger, and he snagged it. He nudged her in and nodded expectantly until she offered up her own address.

"Honestly, Will, does this have to—"

"It does," he affirmed. Minutes later, he peeled off two bills and thrust them at the cabbie. "Keep it."

He didn't speak during the brief elevator ride up five floors, perhaps considering his next words, but the moment they crossed the threshold of her apartment, he began again in earnest.

"What would have happened last night if I hadn't—?"

"You were exhausted, you were definitely under the influence—you _needed_ the sleep—"

"That's beside the point, and you're trying to change the subject." He put both hands on her shoulders to still her. "MacKenzie. I need to know. I've loved you without reservation—I _deserve_ —"

"Will—you deserve better than me. I love you but I've failed you at every juncture. And I—"

"You love me?" His chin dipped and he tightened his grasp on her shoulders.

"Everything's ruined, Billy—I ruined it all. I tried to tell you—"

"You keep saying that and I don't understand."

"The night you filleted the Santorum aid. When you stayed in the studio to work on notes—everyone was gone, on the floor and in Control, and I—"

"I didn't hear it, Mac."

"You still had the IFB—I mean, I saw—and I told you—"

"I didn't _hear_ you, Mac. What did you say?"

She slipped from his hold and retreated a step. "It doesn't matter—" she began.

"It absolutely matters," he shot back with barely contained intensity. "I was chained to a fucking wall, chained like some animal—I didn't know what was going to—and throughout it all, I kept trying to convince myself how grateful I was that I'd left no one behind to grieve or to miss me—but I just clung to the memory of you— _us_ —and, later, when Charlie called—I thought perhaps—"

"Stop," she pleaded. "Please, stop—"

" _I will never stop_. I've never had a choice in this— _thing_ of ours. You were always worth forgiveness, Mac, and I know that if you love me, there's a grace in that feeling that will help us find our way back." He reached a hand to stroke her face. "Please, MacKenzie—"

"—I _do_ love you, Billy." But the admission seemed to break her, and she repeated in a weaker, watery voice, "I'm so, so sorry for all of it." Her eyes filled.

His expression became one of palpable relief. He brought his hands up to cup her face and brought his lips to hers.

"I was afraid I would, you know, be _this_ ," indicating the tears.

"It's okay—you can be _this_ for now," he supplied, so close he was sharing her breath.

"But I'm happy to have it out. _Really_." Her stated happiness seemed at direct odds with the wetness on her face and the forced smile on her lips.

"Then we need to work on your non-verbals." It was only a small joke, just something to lift the mood. He gathered her back to him and rocked reassuringly. "Mac, you've been carrying these wounds for so long—lay it all down. Talk, if you want—I'll listen, I swear. No assumptions. Lay everything down, put it on me." He stroked her hair. "We're okay, Kenz."

It felt so good to hold and be held. It was an unburdening, a release of tension maintained for years, a gigantic sigh of the spirit. After a while, she finally pulled back and looked up at him.

"Yes?" he prompted, lifting an eyebrow.

"We've missed the pitch meeting. No chance to salvage any of the morning at work, and Jim can handle the first rundown—but—" Her smile grew and her eyes brimmed with affection and hope, despite the redness. "If you're up for a bit of celebratory carnality—I mean, we're here and—"

"Why, MacKenzie McHale—I think you're hot for me." Then, his roguish grin yielded to worry, of something just remembered. "Wait. Mac—there's still something I need to tell you—something kind of important, back at the office—"

" _No_." Emphatically. "We're _not_ going to talk about anything at work now."

Her finality and his own reluctance to spoil the moment made him give in. She grabbed his forearm and gently tugged him down the short hallway.

Her bedroom was dim, thanks to a northern exposure, and tidy, the bed neatly made and throw pillows arranged just so. Mac had always been disciplined about things like making the bed.

"Protection?"

That gave her pause. "I'm not on—there wasn't a need—"

"You mean the Backstreet Boys you paraded through the newsroom—"

"They never came _here_ —my god—Reese had me interviewing those boys for on-camera slots for morning side. Billy, you don't think that I would _really_ —" She looked aghast at the speculation. "That was just—"

"Just theatre. I get it." He reached in his pocket and produced a foil-wrapped disk.

"And you just happened to have _that_ with you?"

"Yeah," with a slow lascivious grin, " _just happened_. If you're sure I don't have to compete with the entire company of NSYNC—"

" _Quite_ sure."

His eyes were dark and he was quiet as he unbuttoned the cuffs of her silk blouse and then moved to the buttons along her midriff. She seemed slighter than he remembered, more delicate, with fine, small wrists. When she reached for the zipper of her skirt to assist, he put his fingers over hers on the tab and they pulled in tandem, sending the skirt to puddle on the hardwood.

He leaned into her, now clad only in scraps of lace, and guided her down to the surface of the bed, his hand reaching to tip her chin up, lips to his. She opened her mouth to him and he slowly explored her softness, never unaware of the effect he was having upon her. He pressed a little harder, a little more forcefully, confident that the want was mutual and that intensity should outweigh gentleness just now.

His hand roamed to her breast, cupping and tracing the contour through the lace of her bra, his thumb and forefinger finally digging under the fabric and latching onto her nipple. He rolled and twisted it between his fingers, gratified by her soft moan of approval.

With a slight growl and a sudden movement, he sent a row of decorative pillows to the floor. She giggled softly and he pulled back an inch.

"Well—they make things _crowded_ here."

"No argument, Billy," she licensed, still amused and silly with sensation. "But while you're throwing things off the bed, why not work on your—" She plucked lightly at his shirt.

In a flash, he yanked the navy T-shirt over his head and discarded it, then stood, to better shed his jeans and briefs.

"Much better."

She had pulled back the comforter in the interim, so that when he re-joined her they slid over soft cotton sheets. The warmth and scent of him and the familiar pressure of his hands on her shoulders flooded her with vivid sense memories. When he resumed the kiss, she shivered at the slight rasp of a beard (he usually shaved just before the show, so there had been overnight growth) against her skin, and his hand skimmed her torso before finally dipping to her lower back, dispatching the bra clasp _en route_. After several unnaturally long moments (obviously corollary to the Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity), his mouth moved to map her breasts and his hand slipped between her legs, rubbing a lazy circle across her clit, spreading her arousal over her folds before returning with purpose and insistency.

Helplessly, she began to move in in synch, her hips surging to follow the sensation. A warm flush spread across her skin and she was hit suddenly, forcefully, with the realization of how she had missed _him_ , _this_. It had been so long since she'd touched him, tasted him, allowed herself to think of him.

"MacKenzie?" He noticed her thousand yard stare.

"Don't stop, Billy—please, please, don't—"

Seconds later she came, hard, his name figuring prominently amid the grateful nonsense streaming from her lips. He pulled her close for a kiss that, for her, was somewhat masked by that sudden sensory overload, but was, for him, the necessary emotional coda.

After a half minute, she stirred and lifted her hand.

He took it and tugged gently. "C'mere." He propped himself against the headboard and guided her to his lap. "Up on your knees," he whispered, shifting her so that she stradled him, facing him. "I need to see you, Kenz." His eyes were darkest cerulean as he leaned forward for another soft kiss, then nipped at her jawline and the tender hollows at the base of her neck.

She wrapped her fingers around his erection and gave some appreciative and unhurried strokes, provoking heavy exhalations and a long blink, before he reached to still her. He grabbed the foil packet from the nightstand but she took it from his hands and rolled the condom on his cock.

His hands dropped to her ass and he pulled her forward. "Meet me, babe."

It took a moment for their bodies to fit together again, long enough to elicit a polite stage laugh but never of real concern. This was _right_. This wasn't memory or imagining, this was real.

His hands rested on her hips, fingers flexing to guide her ripples against him. She was hot and wet and he still loved the delicious sensation of her muscles clenching around him.

He tried to arch his own hips upward to help her along, trying to remember everything she liked. He moved his hand to the junction of their bodies and pressed his thumb to her clit. Her thighs began to tremble, and her eyes, dreamily half-lidded with sensation until this point, suddenly widened slightly. He took that as his cue to tighten his grip and speed the pistoning motion of their bodies. She stiffened for a few moments, eyes fluttering closed, then sagged against him.

"I never stopped, Will. Never."

The rapid thrum of her heart and her soft, ragged pants against his neck made it evident that he could seek his own release now. He pulled her harder against him, trying to move deeper in her. Finally ceding self-control, he followed her over the edge.

"God, Mac," he managed hoarsely.

For a lazy hour or so, they abandoned words entirely and relied upon the tactile, gently tracing remembered patterns on each inch of flesh.

Finally, MacKenzie sighed and glanced at the clock.

"It's past eleven. We should probably—"

"We could call in sick—"

She made a face. "Simultaneous sickness? You don't think that might be a bit far-fetched?"

He pulled himself to the edge of the bed and sat up. "Worth a try."

"But the nation is depending on _News Night with Will McAvoy_ —informed electorate and all that—"

"True," he acknowledged with comically blatant false modesty. Grunting, he slipped on his watch and picked up his phone. "Uh oh. The long arm of the news." He tapped to return the call.

"Finally!" Maggie's tone was gloating. "If you two truants are finished with brunch by now—I assume _she's_ with you—"

"She is." He pivoted the phone on his ear and, sweeping Mac's hair to one side, nibbled at her nape. "Should I put you on speaker? We've been brainstorming some ideas about the debates—"

" _Please_." It was clear Maggie's credulity was severely taxed. "There's still a show tonight, so unless you want me and the Boy Wonder to screw things up, you both should consider coming in. Buncha people in the bullpen looking for direction—and it doesn't help knowing inquiring eyes will be around, if you know what I mean." Pause. "I assume you told—"

He swung to the other side of the bed and spoke quickly to cut her off. "We were just getting to that."

"Oh." Beat. "Well, then, good luck. And Jim and I will talk to Sloan about a contingency—"

"That isn't—that won't be—" He exhaled heavily. "Thanks for the call, Maggie, and pull the Boy Wonder off the ceiling. We'll pack up our notes and you'll see us in a little while."

"Right. Don't forget your _notes_." Her harrumph came through the phone, loud and clear. "One more thing—Charlie Skinner's on the war path, so no more free range taxis. Call your security bubba." She disconnected.

He pitched the phone at the night table a little too eagerly and it skittered across and fell to the floor, the drop cushioned by a discarded pillow.

"Trying not to be an egotist—but it sounds as if I may have been a topic of the conversation?"

"Yeah. Maggie and Jim, wondering whether we're coming in today." He weighed how to continue. "Remember what I was trying to tell you earlier this morning?"

"Will, I think I—"

He threw up both hands to compel her attention. "No, really, Mac, you have to let me—you're going to find out as soon as you get there, and you're—"

"I know already." Sitting up, she had both hands locked on the edge of the bed, head down. "Reese Lansing has put Brian Brenner in our newsroom to write an article about the re-vamped _News Night_. Sloan wormed it out of Charlie last night and left me a message."

His jaw slackened with surprise. "You know? And it doesn't bother—"

" _Of course_ it bothers me," she batted back, testily. "I will say it bothers me less _this_ morning than it might've several days ago. But, still, the Lansings running roughshod over _my_ life— _our lives_ —inviting _him_ here—" She paused to gauge his reaction. "It doesn't bother _you_ that Reese selected him of all people to write about our newsroom?"

Buttoning his shirt, he turned away briefly—the better to maintain a façade of ambiguity. "Charlie raged at Reese again this morning, but he and his mother are absolutely intractable. They want some good press—some _malleable_ press, let's say—to distract from the dust we've stirred up."

"Why would he even do the piece?" It was the rhetorical question she'd been turning over in her mind since receiving Sloan's message.

"Means to an end. He needs a cover story, needs to be seen as a heavyweight again. Four years ago, he was on the masthead at _Newsweek_ , turning out ten cover stories a year and spending Sunday mornings with the talking heads of political commentary. Today, he has a blog." Will shrugged. "He won't write a tell-all—he's got too much to lose." He offered a hopeful smile. "We're fine."

"Brian comes with an axe to grind, you can be sure. He only works from self-interest, and this will just be too tempting for him. " MacKenzie knew her assessment was more honest than Will's, but threw in the towel on further discussion. Their reconciliation still seemed too tentative to risk discussing the current motives of a former lover.

"Besides, Leona's been gunning for me since I returned," he continued, intent on some deflection of his own. "She'd love to see me doing cheap features on ACN Morning."

"Over Charlie Skinner's dead body. Not to mention my own."

He closed the distance between them. "I had other plans for your—"

"In that case, we'll both have something to look forward to. That is, if we can keep your stamina up."

"You can't possibly have any complaints about my stamina."

"Not yet," she laughed, dropping a light kiss on his lips. "I'm just feeling— _vested_ in it now."

While she readied herself for work for the second time that morning, Will followed Maggie's counsel and summoned his Blue North detail. Late morning had morphed into high noon by the time Lonny called to advise the car was at the curb, waiting.

On the way outside the building, Mac suddenly stopped and pulled Will aside.

"Tell me again this is real."

"Very real." He kissed her.

She nodded over quickly. "Just don't want to wake up and—"

"But you tell me something, now. If you knew already, was this morning—the last coupla hours—was this just defiance for the Lansings bringing him in—?"

She cut him off. "This morning was when I stopped denying myself what I really wanted. You."

oooo

Whatever theories Lonny Church may have had about why McAvoy and McHale were coming out of her apartment building _together_ , he gallantly kept to himself. He even managed to keep his face expressionless as he opened the rear door of the Escalade.

As Mac turned to enter the vehicle, a pinpoint dot of red light seemed to dance over her silk blouse.

Unconsciously, Will made an immediate association and looked back at Church. In seeming validation, Lonny shifted into a defensive choreography.

 _Protect the principal._

He shoved first Mac, then Will himself, through the open car door. Reverting to well-practiced tactics, he scanned the sidewalk for threats and ran around to the driver's side. Then, he put the car in gear and accelerated into a gap in the on-coming traffic.

oooo

During the ride, Mac seemed oblivious to any unusual concern or haste on the part of the driver. Will, still uncertain of the import of what he had seen, decided not to entertain any discussion of the matter at the moment. No point to upsetting her, and he was sure Lonny would be more forthcoming in his assessment one-on-one.

As soon as they stepped from the elevator at the AWM tower, staffers were lined up for an audience with Mac, so she offered a parting apologetic smile at Will before walking toward them. As she left, Will shot a sharp glance at Lonny and motioned to his office.

"You saw what I saw?"

Lonny nodded.

"Laser-sighted weapon?"

"I think so, yeah."

Will couldn't get over the laser's red dot settling on Mac's silk blouse. "What do we do?"

"For starters, _we_ —" emphasizing the majestic plural, "could get serious about using the protective escort that's been provided. _We_ could stop with the spree rides in unvetted taxis and parading through unknown apron areas like that sidewalk."

"Yeah, yeah, got it," Will acknowledged, not liking the scolding. "What about this guy that's assigned to her?"

"Cesare's a good man—"

"Is he _really_ good? Is he the best available? Maybe you two need to swap assignments for a little while—"

"Someone a little higher on the food chain makes that call, not me." Lonny seemed to think aloud. "There was clear targeting but no shot fired."

"So whoever it is is just trying to scare us? Counting coup?"

"Hey, McAvoy, make up your mind what side you wanna argue. Weren't you the guy who said that a serious assassin wouldn't send you an email beforehand to warn you?" He frowned. "Still, something's changed. I need to talk to Scott at Blue North."

"Yeah. You do that."

oooo

MacKenzie finally finished with the supplicants and made it to her office, where she found Sloan leaning against the desk, arms crossed expectantly.

"You're waiting to see me, too?" Mac asked, setting down her folio and purse. "How did I become so indispensable in only twelve hours?"

"I wasn't thinking indispensable. I was thinking— _incommunicado_."

"I got your message, thanks—I guess." She made a face to convey how little she liked the news. "I tried to call back last night, but you—"

"I was lost in the Twilight Zone with Larry and Curly all night. And, evidently, cell phones don't work in all elevators—who knew?—and the freight elevator at McAvoy's building is not one of the ones where they do—work, that is—and the alarm in that elevator is just part of the problem with it, because it didn't work either, just like the up-and-down part, and during the times when it did work, nobody paid any attention to it at all—the alarm, I mean—so we—"

"Hold on, hold on." Mac put out a hand to stop her friend's recitation. "Are you saying you were stuck in the lift at Will's—"

"Not stuck—trapped! With a man who is, let's face it, a poster child for happy marriages, and another man who—"

There was a soft rap at the door and Don Keefer peered in.

"Am I interrupting anything important?" He slid in regardless.

Sloan's expression curdled.

"Here he is—Mr. How to Succeed in Television without Really Trying."

He put a finger alongside his nose in recognition of her parody. "Good—very good!" He shifted his glance back to Mac.

"I wanted to ask for a few extra minutes tonight."

"I don't think I can give it to you." Mac began scanning the headlines on the stack of papers on her desk. "We've got follow up on the bin Laden raid—and there's the injunction on the Wisconsin law curbing collective bargaining, which will be a roadblock for Governor Scott Walker—plus, the upset in New York's 26th congressional district—"

"How important can—"

Sloan pounced. "It's New York's most conservative district and it's about to go Democratic for the first time in 70 years. Kinda important."

"And so is this: the House is going to vote up or down on increasing the debt ceiling—"

"Don't they do that all the time?"

Mac cleared her throat. "I don't think I have the time to give you tonight—"

Don persevered. "Listen to me, this should be your lead story. Congress is attempting to take the U.S. Treasury hostage. This might be the first time in history the House lets the U.S. default on its debt. Even worse, it could be the first round in a very reckless, extremely dangerous partisan fight that can only end in financial catastrophe—" Noticing their glazing eyes, he paused. "Let me explain—"

"I can't give you the time."

"If Congress doesn't raise—"

"I can't give you the extra time, Don—you'll have to cover it in what you've already got."

He sighed audibly. "This is a complicated subject and it's going to take some background to bring the average viewer up to speed enough just to understand the debate. I need more than three minutes at the end of the D block."

"I'll give it to you."

Mac and Don both turned to look at Sloan—Mac openly puzzled at Sloan's acquiescence and Don gratified that he'd successfully made his case to someone.

"Can't lead with it, of course, because we have to follow up the raid, too—but I can let you have C block for sure and B if you can make your case for newsworthiness for me at the rundown. Deal?"

Don looked from woman to woman, beaming, before turning back to Sloan. "You're the greatest!" he enthused, departing.

"I really am," Sloan deadpanned.

Mac was beginning to suspect ulterior motives at work. "Is there something between you two? What happened in that lift last night?"

"We were chaperoned, remember? Sir Elliot-the-Chaste?" Sloan shrugged. "That nerdy little guy is growing on me." Then she returned to the subject at hand. "We were talking about the Lansings hiring _you-know-who_ to—"

"Actually, I don't think we'd gotten as far as talking about that."

"Charlie's still arguing it with Reese, but—I think _he'll_ be here tomorrow."

"Great," Mac said, while making it plain the news was anything but.

oooo

When Sloan finally departed, Mac sank down into her chair and exhaled shakily. The constant barrage since her arrival had diluted the impact of the morning. Intoxicated confessions. Reluctant admissions. A newly-revived romance now facing a familiar source of trauma. And all following on top of one of the most thrilling and disquieting nights of breaking news in her experience.

Her desk line buzzed. She might have guessed it would be Charlie.

"Look, Mac—I know Will must've told you by now—and don't shoot the messenger, I offered to tell you but he insisted it should come from him. And I wanted you to know how sorry I am—I've talked to Reese until I'm blue in the face but I can't—"

"It's okay, Charlie."

"Oh." There was a pause while he digested her easy assent. "You know, if you wanted to take a few weeks off right now, a kind of strategic get-away—you'd get no objection from me. Will's stuck, because Leona wants to play up the whole war correspondent angle, but you—"

"Charlie, everything will be fine." Did she really believe that? This was _Brian Brenner_ , after all, of whom they were speaking. And it was a delicate time, what with she and Will having just—well, _come to an_ _understanding_ , if she could think that without a giggle at the understatement.

"If you say so. But, Mac, I want you to think about time off anyway. You've got plenty of it banked up. You've got a very capable and well-trained staff. Let them carry the load for a bit and—"

"Thanks for your concern, Charlie. But it isn't necessary."

"I'm just thinking to prevent any awkwardness—there's a history here and —"

"Charlie," silencing him with his name. "The history you know is wrong. I misrepresented it. Will never—and Brian wasn't—" She choked a little, not so much from emotion but from the shame of having to admit an untruth that had festered for years.

Another pause.

"Why don't you come up to my office for a few minutes?"

oooo

Mac returned an hour later, intersecting Jim in the bullpen.

"Final rundown ready?"

"Yeah." His eyes searched her. "Is everything all right? You seem a little—"

"There's no problem, Jim. I'm fine," she lied. "Did you get the SOT with Walker's aid?"

He began guiding her toward the conference room, handing her a legal pad with written notes and several sheets of printed information.

"Yeah, and we have an interview with Hochul."

She stopped. "Really? That's good. Who did that?"

"Gary knew a guy who knew a guy."

"Well. The new Democratic representative of the 26th District. That's good work. What else?"

They entered the conference room together, and Mac went immediately to the head of the room, next to the white board on the easel.

"Good afternoon, everyone. Jim gave me the preliminary rundown, so let's get to work and tighten this up. There's the expected fallout in Abbottabad—a suicide bomber in Shabqatar who left 80 dead and 120 wounded—head of the IMF Dominique Strauss-Kahn arrested in France—Bosnian-Serb general Ratko Mladic captured today and held on charges of overseeing a massacre that may have killed up to 8,000 Muslims."

When she looked up and down the table, she was slightly unnerved to see Will holding a drink can with the unmistakably silver and blue logo of Red Bull.


	10. Every Time We Say Goodbye

After the show that night, MacKenzie dithered in Control, ostensibly critiquing graphics cues with Joey and reviewing the next day's production schedule with Jim and Kendra, until the production crew for _Right Now_ physically overtook the space. The others were anxious to go home for the night, so Mac finally retreated to her own office.

Will showed up a few minutes later.

"Good show," she said, wanting to say something else but falling back on accepted routine.

He nodded shortly. "We're going to need to follow up -"

"—The Strauss-Kahn indictment. Already on it. I talked to Jim after the show."

"Good."

There was a long pause and she could feel him watching her, so, almost defensively, she grabbed some papers and stuffed them into her bag to maintain the air of being busy, of not waiting for him to say something. She had no idea what he might say, whether the grand gesture of this morning would be retracted or minimized.

"Here's the thing, Mac: I don't know what comes next."

She stopped her motion and looked at him, askance.

Well, if _he_ didn't know, did that make this morning a _one morning stand_?

"What I mean is—we're back together—I want us to be—" he watched her closely for any hint of recalcitrance, "so—do I have to wait for invitations and try to read signals or can I just—"

She sighed, visibly relieved.

"—Assume?"

" _Assume, assume_. For god's sake— _assume_." She smiled weakly and ran a hand across her forehead. "You had me going for a moment."

He closed the distance between them and took her in his arms. "Wanted to be on firm ground since I'm about to invite myself over to your place tonight."

oooo

Gradually, the familiar overtook the uncertain in the off-duty arena. They left together and returned together, but no one in the office made any immediate connection, chalking it up instead to something having to do with the security detail. And whatever conclusion Lonny Church and Cesare Maldonado may have independently reached concerning the new element of apparent cohabitation between their principals—well, they were discreet enough to not even raise an eyebrow.

Truth to tell, the newsroom staff may have been slightly distracted by the presence of an outside reporter—a free-lance guy, engaged by AWM to do a story. He had been hanging around the bullpen for days, observing and asking questions. He wasn't particularly intrusive but he was perennially underfoot and seemed to possess unfettered access.

And so, on Thursday morning, as Brian Brenner made to follow several people into the conference room for an impromptu meeting that looked interesting, it was significant that Charlie Skinner stopped him, closing the door with a definite shake of the head.

Mac caught the exchange out of the corner of her eye and declined to give it more attention. She was relieved not to have to endure _that_ peculiar scrutiny on top of what already stood to be a gathering with unpleasant ramifications. She and Will and Charlie were meeting with Lonny Church, the latter fresh from a day of conferences at Blue North Executive Protective Services and laden with counter-something strategies that she knew intuitively would be invasive, intrusive, and not at all necessary.

She intended to have none of it.

Then she saw the Kevlar vests that had been heaped on the conference table.

"Seriously? Body armor? Isn't this over the top?" She dropped her chin and let her expression carry the full weight of her disbelief and exasperation. Then, she turned to Charlie. "Your idea?"

"Mac, we need to hear _every_ recommendation from Blue North," Will preempted. He didn't want to go into the detail that prompted this turn of events—the tell-tale pinpoint of light from a targeting laser. "We may not _take_ every precaution they recommend, but we need to _hear_ everything and evaluate it for ourselves," Will added, ignoring the glares from the other men, "at least until they can nail down the real threat."

"Will, threats are a constant," she protested, with a slightly condescending shake of the head. "This isn't new. This has been going on for nearly two years now, even when Jane Barrow was the 'face and voice of ACN's _News Night_.'"

"Humor me, Mac."

"Besides, we're having record heat," she added, using a pen to poke derisively at the Kevlar vests. "We might be safe from bullets but we would die of heat stroke. Counter-productive, don't you think?"

"S'okay, s'okay," Lonny intervened. "These are just an option. If you don't want them, we've got some work-arounds."

"Such as?" She sounded suspicious.

"Coordination of the protective effort." Even to his ears, it sounded like a phrase from a Blue North promotional brochure, so he hastened to explain. "Secure entry and egress. Security profiles of people you interact with regularly. Video surveillance and a duress alarm at the residence. Minimal street exposure, and a protective escort when you have to be out. Irregular schedule and random routes to and from work." He paused, litany complete. "If you'll authorize it, we'll take care of the video surveillance and residence alarm tomorrow. We've got folks in-house who can do it with minimum disruption."

Both Will and Charlie looked at Mac, expectantly. She nodded.

"Okay," Lonny affirmed, happy that this was going smoothly now. "Cesare and I will remain on the protective detail, although we may need to add a man situationally. I'll need a list of people you interact with regularly outside of work—household staff, personal trainer, neighbors, doorman—"

"My flat doesn't have a doorman. Are you suggesting I move?"

Lonny looked to Charlie Skinner for help.

"Mac, these are short-term measures."

"Video surveillance, Charlie," she countered. "In my _home_."

"For _your_ protection," he insisted. "C'mon, Mac. These guys are the experts. Let them do their jobs."

She shifted her gaze over to Will.

"It won't be the first time you've had to put up with a few small inconveniences to keep doing what we do. Besides, as you said, it's better than wearing body armor in the summer."

She huffed a self-deprecating laugh. "I'm out-voted, it seems. I give up."

"Atta girl," Charlie commended. "Nothing like strategic surrender." He squeezed her shoulder and shot her a wink on his way out.

On the other side of the table, Lonny looked distinctly relieved. He tucked the Kevlar vests under his arm and started for the door. "We'll make this as easy for you as we can."

She nodded, trying to seem a little brighter and more positive, a little less adversarial.

When they were alone together, Will slid his hand across the table, lifting it up to reveal a key.

"You don't have a doorman. You don't have a perimeter security buffer and there's an exposed apron in front of your building—"

"I see you've been infected with Blue North Speak," she observed dryly.

"MacKenzie." His tone was patient but unyielding. "I'm not suggesting this because I want to jump your bones, although I do and I'm still hoping I will. But my place has advantages yours doesn't have. And if this seems to be moving too fast, I have a guest room, too, with an empty closet, and I have very little pride about such things and I would deed you the bedroom and just walk around in socks so as not to disturb you." He smiled his most winsome smile.

oooo

"You shouldn't be allowed to stand there like that. Look that good. It should be against the law."

She froze at the door of her own office. He was _there_ , seated comfortably across from her desk, looking up with the supercilious expression she remembered so well. Brian Brenner continued the schmoozy patter, which she'd never before recognized as so patently crass and boorish, so patronizing and insulting. His idea of a charm offensive and one to which she was now immune.

"This New York pallor becomes you. How've you been, Mac?"

Much as she wanted to, she couldn't simply turn on her heel. He had talked to the other staffers, now was simply her turn in the proverbial barrel. Besides, she couldn't cede her office; she had work to do, and he was bound to catch up with her eventually.

"Brian," she managed, as coolly as she could. "I heard you were around." A polite but obvious lie, since each had noticed the other one watching as Brenner worked his way through the bullpen, collecting background material.

He barked a short laugh. "Yeah, I've been around. Leona Lansing wants a story about this war hero at the news desk. Except—"

"Except what?" She knew his line was bait but she couldn't _not_ take it. She tried to mask concern by brusquely moving papers and folders around her desk.

"I heard he came back _not quite right_. I heard he went damn near catatonic on air one night."

"You heard wrong." She stopped what she was doing. Then, pointedly, "What are you planning to write, Brian?"

He shut his eyes and turned his face upward, feigning concentration. "Hmm. How about, tragi-comic anchor with attraction to misfortune and heartbreak? A martyr in the cause of a superfluous mission? Or—tragic hero in search of more tragedy?" He shrugged. "Pagliacci or Don Quixote?"

"None of those are accurate, and you used to be—if nothing else—an accurate writer."

Brian made a low whistle and affected affront. "Sounds like you're pissed at me, Mac."

"I'm doing things right this time."

"Yeah, well," throwing one hand up in a gesture of insouciance, "keep in mind that seduction isn't the same thing as rape, and I can't be faulted for having capitalized on your fantasies about happily-ever-afters and white picket fences. You were victimized by your own expectations, not by me."

She leveled her eyes at him. "What do you want, Brian?"

"Something good on McAvoy. Something to surprise old Leona."

"The story is this: Will is a heavyweight. He always was, and it took him leaving that desk for everyone else to see it, too."

"Lightweights get higher ratings," he interjected, always needing to have the last word. "Will's a lonely guy, isn't he? I assumed you would know— _you know_ ," Brian smirked.

She afforded that statement a moment's reflection. "I think he has been lonely— I don't know if that started around the time I told him I'd slept with you, but I'll bet it didn't help. "

"Was he prescribed meds for PTSD? Has he ever done the show under the influence?"

"You can't—you don't know what you're talking about." Her outrage was genuine, even if her argument wasn't.

He rolled his pen between his fingers. "Haven't figured it all out yet. But here's a guy who once had a show and went out of his way to avoid reporting the actual news. Then he takes a sudden inexplicable hard right turn into a war zone, has a few close calls, and now he's attacking his own political party."

"Isn't that what you wanted him to do back when you were calling him a broadcast coward?"

"Yeah, but that's not the story I'm following and you already knew that, so please stop trying to fuck with me, Mac. Leona Lansing wants a puff piece, something that will translate into viewership and a little bit of buzz for your show. Reese Lansing thinks this will finally flush out the troll who's been making threats against McAvoy and the show—you, too, I hear, although that would be such a waste. Me—I just need to get back on the map—"

"Your blog isn't working out?"

His raised a thin smile in contradiction to unamused eyes. "You know, _MacKenzie_ , I have no desire to rake up the past but I'm perfectly capable of it."

When Brenner finally left, Mac took a moment to compose herself and then dialed Charlie's office.

oooo

"Mr. Skinner—wait—she's on the—"

But Barbara, Leona's assistant, was unable to stop Charlie Skinner in high dudgeon, so she stood back as he barreled through the teak doors and into the inner sanctum.

Behind the desk, Leona lifted an eyebrow at the interruption but otherwise continued her phone conversation.

"I see—we can work with that—not for another six weeks—I understand that, but you're going to have to discuss the implementation with my son—yes—don't worry about that, it will be taken care of." She dropped the phone into the cradle and looked up. "Charlie, your storming into my office is getting very tiresome."

He slid a sheaf of folded papers across her desk and took a step back, crossing his arms.

"Don't tell me this is your resignation." She slipped on her glasses and unfolded the papers.

"It's my new contract with ABC. They want to rebuild their news division to better support Diane Sawyer and they're willing to throw a lot of money at it."

She pushed the papers away without even looking at them. "Precisely why my attorneys put a non-compete clause in your contract."

"And precisely why _my_ attorney always gets it removed."

Leona froze for a moment, surprised by the certainty he evinced. "No non-compete clause?" When he shook his head, her lips twitched in some unspoken vulgarity. Then, she said, "Those idiot pettifoggers are supposed to be looking out for my best interests." She fanned through the pages before her, stopping at the last one. "You haven't signed this."

"No, but I'm going to if—"

"— _If_ ," she completed for him, knowing he was headed back to familiar terrain. " _If_ I don't kill the piece that that writer for _New York Magazine_ is working on." She made a face. "The show could use the attention, you know. McAvoy comes with some background that can be angled to—"

Charlie waved a hand in a dismissive gesture. "Stop trying to justify this. These are people's _lives_. You're meddling—"

"Just cauterizing the wound, Charlie. Those two did the damage to each other and the public will remember, so if we play this right—"

"Leona." He dropped his arms and paced a couple of circuits. Then, he looked up. "Why are you trying to sabotage _News Night_? Can it be that you really want Will on cheesy human interest features? Or that you—" Realization and conviction settled across his features. "Mac. It's Mac. You're jealous of Mac. You never got your chance at KTLA forty years ago, so you're going to—"

That hit close to home and Leona's expression soured. "Don't forget who you're talking to, Charlie. And you can cut the amateur psychologist routine, because there isn't any competition, real or imagined, between me and McHale." She leaned back in her chair. "I'm just trying to tweak McAvoy's Q score."

"Q score? Rating his familiarity and appeal?"

"It isn't what it was before he left, you know. The consultant says he has low energy—"

"Low energy—wait, c _onsultant_? When did you bring in a—"

"Affability is fine, he can be affable—except he's not being _that_ lately, either. I thought there would be some residual sexiness from the whole foreign correspondent shtick. I thought there would be some sparks with McHale, like there used to be—nothing unprofessional, just a little hint of something under the covers. That's all I want, Charlie. Bring back that fire-in-the-belly stuff. You and McHale haven't been able to, so I needed to goose things—"

"You brought in Brenner just to provoke Will," Charlie sputtered, the nefarious machinations perfectly clear now that she'd explained them to him.

"I want some spark in my anchor, that's all. There's absolutely no reason why we should have to settle for _second_ most watched anchor in cable news." She tossed the papers across the desk, in his direction. "Now, what do we do about this impasse, Charlie?"

oooo

There was a flicker across the bank of video screens _._ Then, pitch dark.

"Herb?" Mac prompted.

"Power's out in the whole building."

There it was, an incisive assessment of the obvious.

But he didn't stop there. "Probably a rolling brown-out. You're aware how hot it was supposed to be today, right?"

"Equatorial Manhattan. Yes, I heard." She pivoted mentally. "Wait. It's been explained to me nineteen different ways how we can never lose power in the studio. What about all the redundancies?"

"There was a round of budget cuts before you got here—" Jake's disembodied voice explained, "and they cut some of them—"

"Don't say it—"

But the other shoe had to fall.

"—Because they thought they were redundant."

While the room was still black, as her eyes adjusted, she felt the nearness of someone. The cloying aroma of over-applied cologne told her who it was.

"Well." That well-remembered tone of brittle condescension. "Is it always this exciting around here or am I getting lucky tonight."

"You are not getting lucky tonight," she batted back reflexively, not at all certain where he had been headed with that double entendre, but anxious to cut it off.

The emergency lights kicked on and she quickly moved toward Herb at the video switcher.

"Okay. That's a good sign, right?"

"Those are battery powered. Maintenance is checking on the generator."

An idea occurred to her. "Do we have a contingency if the power doesn't come on by show time?"

"Throw to D.C.?"

Even in the dimness of a few emergency lights, Mac could see everyone in Control exchange unsure glances.

"Ask for a miracle?" another anonymous voice piped up.

"Exactly!" Mac seized upon the suggestion.

Gary stuck his hand in the air. "Raise your hand if Mac's freaking you the hell out right now."

"Mac?" Jim sounded querulous. "Perhaps we should talk more about electricity—"

"No, no, hear me out. We can do the show outside in the plaza. All we need are a desk, a camera, some microphones, and a way to beam a signal."

Kendra caught the drift. "We could use a single tripod-mounted handheld, run video and graphics through D.C.—"

"Can we get a sat truck?" Jake asked, now intrigued.

Will's voice came over the speaker. "Do we have an ETA on repairs or am I gonna have to do this by candlelight?"

"Hang loose. We're looking at options," Mac toggled back. She resumed her pitch to the Control Room personnel. "This can be a blessing in disguise. I say, the power going out might be the best thing that ever happened to us. Pulled us out of complacency and made us solve problems!" She looked around the room, now plainly cheer-leading and showing off her team, and tried to ignore Brenner's look of mild astonishment. "Does anybody think we can't pull this off?"

As a couple of hands inched into the air, electrical power was restored with a slight _pop_ , probably from the ventilation system as it returned to life.

"Son of a bitch," she muttered.

"Hot dog, we're back in business," Will said from the studio.

oooo

On Friday morning, Brian Brenner balanced coffee in one hand and his cell and ubiquitous notepad in the other as he entered Will's office for the climactic interview to his week at ACN. He was actually looking forward to it. Not only did he stand to get a nice payday for the story, but he got to fuck with McAvoy before, during, and after.

 _Priceless_.

"So, when did the _notion_ of being Will McAvoy begin to get in the way of _being_ Will McAvoy?"

Will reached for the pack of Marlboros, shook one out and tapped the filter on the desktop to pack the tobacco. It was an old cigarette custom. He put it between his lips and lit it, then spread his hands. "Hey, I _like_ being Will McAvoy. I go places. I meet people." He waved a hand at the gallery of framed photographs on the wall, all showing him meeting with various heads of state and high-ranking dignitaries.

"Can you defend your Republicanism?"

"You say that like I've got polio."

"Are you prepared to defend polio?" Underplaying his derision, Brian kept his eyes down with his pen, both hovering over his notebook.

Will sighed with annoyance. "I grew up in a town outside of town outside Lincoln, Nebraska. I was a college freshman before I met a Democrat."

Brian pulled out a sheet of paper with the anchor's C.V. and hit the highlights. "Graduated Nebraska at 19. Law school—graduated early there, too. Prosecutor's office, impressive conviction rate. Presidential speech-writer. Legal correspondent for CNN. Moved into the anchor chair. But then—" He paused. "What made you think you needed Afghanistan as a professional finishing school?"

"It gives me more credibility at the desk."

"Hairspray could do the same thing." Having landed a _bon mot_ , Brian leaned on one arm of his chair. "Did someone suggest you needed more credibility as an anchor, or was it simply a sabbatical gone bad?"

Will stubbed out the cigarette after only a couple of puffs, trying to mask his growing impatience at this _feint-parry-riposte_ interview. "I'm just a middle aged man who never lived up to my potential. So, I decided to see the war up close."

"A sudden decision, too. I mean, the network could have capitalized on this with some publicity. Popular anchor quits practically overnight and flings himself into a war zone."

"You make it sound as though I was running away from home."

"Were you?" Not waiting for a response, Brenner flipped some pages in his notebook. "Some close calls in the field. An IED explosion. Abduction and rescue. All very colorful. And you came through it, unscathed."

"I'm a lucky guy." _How long can I stay lucky?_

"Yeah, but a lot of journalists don't get repatriated. They—" Brenner made a motion across his throat.

"Some do," Will tossed back, simply because he wanted to be argumentative. "Bob Simon. Richard Engel. That guy with Fox News, whatever his name was, back in 2006."

"You were held in Karz for, what, a week?"

"Not even."

 _In a small, windowless room._

"There's a saying, you never hear the bullet with your name on it. Can you vouch for that?"

"That doesn't even make sense. I've heard a few bullets in my time and I've never been shot."

Judging by Will's increasingly monosyllabic responses, Brenner thought he must be onto something. He checked his notes again.

"You were held by Rasuli Akhund, who was the regional Big Bad. His faction splintered from the Taliban when Mansoor took over from Mullah Omar. That must have been—"

"Akhund's dead now, too." Will couldn't help a smirk. "There was a drone with his name on it."

"That rescue, though. Pretty spectacular." Brenner dropped his sarcasm for a moment and seemed genuinely impressed. "Not every journalist rates such—"

"You forget, there was a U.S. soldier there, too—not that I ever saw him until afterwards. And they had the Intel to make the move. I don't think they came only to rescue little ol' me. I was just lucky."

 _That word again._

But Brenner shot off on another tangent. "So Skinner recruits you to come back to ACN because ratings are eroding under Jane Barrow."

Will shrugged. "AWM's bean-counters worry about ratings. We don't."

"We?" Brenner looked up. "That would be you—Charlie Skinner—and—and—"

"My E.P." The possessive pronoun was deliberate. Will's eyes narrowed. _What kind of fucking games do you want to play?_

"MacKenzie McHale." Brian made a disingenuous scribble. "So, you don't care about your audience—"

"The _size_ of the audience," Will clarified, "but that isn't what I said. I let the AWM business people sweat the show's ratings. I worry about the content of the show."

"Sounds like high-minded bullshit, if you don't mind me saying so. First, if no one watches, content doesn't matter. You're on your way to irrelevance. Second, I don't think Leona Lansing is going to give a pass to your philosophy. She wants both the business dollar _and_ the prestige of a highly-rated news show. She replaced Barrow with you, so she's trying to parlay your resume into viewers." He retracted the point of his pen with a sharp click. "The only thing I don't get is why she didn't dump Mac when she got rid of Barrow. Out with the old, you know. Get those ratings up. You could even shoot for first place with the right team."

"We've got the right team now," Will ground out. "MacKenzie McHale is crucial to the team. Besides, ratings are more cyclical than you think, so we don't get all that alarmed about them."

Brenner stood and walked around Will's desk. "May I?" indicating the framed photographs.

"Knock yourself out." Will turned around and leaned against his desk.

The writer nodded and hummed over the more recognizable personages, and asked confirmation on a couple he wasn't sure of. "McChrystal?"

"No, General McKiernan. And that's Ambassador Eikenberry to his left."

A grunt of acknowledgement. Brenner arrived at the last photograph, a color candid. "Who's this?"

"A stringer on my team. He's dead now."

"That anything you want to talk about?"

"Not particularly." _Not to you_. Will's head had begun to hurt and he wished he could wind up this interview.

But Brenner seemed determined to thwart him. He circled around the desk and dropped back into his armchair. "I guess it's all timing, isn't it? Keeping your head down when the bullets are flying."

Will tried to shrug.

"But sometimes there are dangers here at home, too. You know what's a crazy coincidence? Something else important happened that week you were in Karz."

oooo

"Have you seen Will?"

Jim was standing over Maggie's desk.

She shot a glance at the bank of clocks on the opposite wall. "Don't tell me you've misplaced our anchor forty minutes before show," she returned archly.

"Seriously. Have you seen—"

"No. And I'm being serious. Is he upstairs?"

Jim shook his head.

"Editing? Transmission Control? The Starbucks downstairs?" Her guesses were becoming more far-fetched. Finally, "Does Mac know?"

"Since she sent me to find him, I'm guessing not." He checked his watch. "Call Blue North, see if they have a twenty for him. Meanwhile, I'll make a discreet call to D.C., give Terry Smith a heads up to be on standby."

When others around them stopped and looked up, Jim and Maggie followed their eyes. Will McAvoy, drenched, his clothing plastered to his body, walked past them toward his office. They exchanged a look.

 _Was this Will McAvoy's Howard Beale moment?_

"I'll go get a read out," Maggie said, rising, making to follow him.

"I'll tell Mac he's here, but let me know if something's wrong and we need to throw to Terry."

Maggie stuck her head through the door to Will's office. He was standing facing the rain-splattered window.

"Tess put your suit on the hook."

An insipid remark, intended merely to get enough reaction for her to judge his state. His only response was a slow nod, insufficient for her purpose. She was searching for something else to say, something weightier, when Mac came up behind her and pushed inside. With the A team on board now, Maggie withdrew.

"Will?" Mac noticed how wet he was. Obviously, he'd been outside in the rain. For quite a while, too, given the state of his clothes. "Will, is everything all right? You're soaked to the bone." She went to the bathroom and reached for a towel. "Let's get you dried—"

He followed her into the small bathroom and pulled her against the door, his hand pinning her there.

"Why, Mac? Why didn't you tell me?"

He was angry, no mistaking that. She went cold, beginning to fear the source of his intensity.

"Will—" She knew the futility of putting this genie back in the bottle, but she tried to be calming. They were going to have to have this conversation eventually—but, _damn the timing_. "Billy," she tried again, gently twisting in his grasp, which was firm but not painful.

His eyes betrayed torment. His fingers wrapped loosely around her arm and began sliding the silk sleeve upward.

"I had to learn it from _him_."

 _Damn Brian._

"Oh, Billy. I would have—I was working up to it—" She let her words trail off, aware that everything sounded like an excuse, like a justification for withholding an important secret. Better to simply bite the bullet. "I'm sorry, Will. You shouldn't have had to learn that way. I don't even know how he—I mean, there were only a couple of people who—found out," _finding out_ having a more delicate shade of ambiguity than _knowing_ , "I thought you were gone, and I had done that to you, and I just couldn't live with the—"

His mouth came down on hers in possessive kiss, seething with something still unspoken between them before gradually softening. He pulled back, his eyes less anguished and more resigned.

"What happened to me wasn't your fault."

"I—" she hesitated, dropping her eyes, "I've never been as strong as you think I am."

His mouth hitched in a wry half-smile. "You're wrong." He reached for the towel.

"Should I ask Terry Smith to cover tonight?"

He shook his head.

"I'll send Janet to the studio for hair and make-up." She wanted to say something more, but she just wasn't sure what it should be.

"Go produce," he said, mercifully dismissing her.

oooo

Will's silence on the drive home began to spook Mac, and by the time they reached their destination, she had reconsidered the wisdom of spending the night together.

"I didn't even ask," she started, almost timidly following him into the apartment. "But perhaps—after everything that's gone on—today and— _before_ —perhaps we each need some alone time—to think through all this?"

"I don't think time apart helps us. Do you?"

She dropped onto the sofa. "I don't know. I just know that I keep hurting you—"

Seemingly oblivious, he studied his phone and asked, "Hungry?"

"No." Her stomach was in knots and nothing about the idea of eating appealed to her.

"Did you have lunch?"

"Tea and biscuit at the rundown."

He pressed a key and put down his cell phone. "I ordered some carry-out. It'll be here in a little while."

Then, he came and sat beside her, hands on his knees, not touching her and not looking directly at her. "Mac," he said, quietly, then taking a long pause to consider his words, "there was a time when I thought everything was going to end in a small, windowless room. It didn't. We've hurt each other but that's all gone now." He moved his hand over hers. "We're going to be okay, Mac."

His saying it suddenly made it so, and she fell into his arms.

After a few minutes, they pulled apart.

"I know the damage has been done—but I need to tell you. Charlie finally prevailed over Mrs. Lansing today. She's stopped the story, paid the magazine's kill fee and even sweetened it to make sure— _he_ —didn't try to peddle it elsewhere on his own."

Will just nodded and rose. "Let's go get changed into something comfortable."

"Wait, there's something else I need to say."

She couldn't read his expression as he stood there, expectantly, so her words became faster and more disjointed. "I couldn't—and you should know I never would have—but I want to—so much—now." She turned and rummaged in her bag, withdrawing a velveteen box. "I kept it—because I'm in love with you—and I don't ever want to be—no, I love you. Can I just stick to that?"

oooo

The weekend passed quietly and quickly. The security considerations that kept them largely homebound enabled them to work through past miscommunications and tentatively talk about the future, which by now was obvious would soon include the three of them: Will, MacKenzie, and a well-traveled ring. For the moment, however, they opted to keep the ring in the box, until they could prepare friends and co-workers for the seemingly abrupt shift to their relationship.

And, so, on Monday morning, after parking the Escalade in the AWM underground garage, Lonny shepherded Will and Mac to the elevator, and then withdrew to the back corner to extend a smidgen of privacy in the confined space. Just as the elevator doors began to slide closed, a thin man in soiled work clothes slipped in as well.

"Thanks, man," he nodded at Will, who stood facing the control buttons, even though Will hadn't done anything to facilitate the man's entry. "Nearly didn't make it." Indicating the buttons, he added, "Lobby."

Will depressed the L button and turned back to face Mac, whose back was against the wall.

Lonny scrutinized the new arrival as he moved to the opposite wall of the lift. _Good_. _There was space, a safety gap_. They could all go back to what was normally done on elevators, which was to not look at each other.

Well, except for McAvoy and McHale. They still seemed unable to take their eyes off each other.

So, Lonny glanced back down at the calendar on his phone, concentrating on the juggling he would have to do to accommodate Blue North's latest schedule change.

A _ping_ announced arrival at the lobby and three pairs of eyes flicked up to the LCD floor display. The third man straightened and stepped forward. But as the doors slid open, he suddenly moved laterally, shoving Will.

Several things happened at once.

Will felt a sharp punch to his lower back and jerked forward involuntarily, toward Mac, whose eyes widened slightly with surprise.

Lonny dropped his hands and propelled himself forward in response to some inner alarm, although he still couldn't discern an overt threat.

The stranger straightened and pushed out of the elevator, turning briefly to mouth a single word that Lonny could not make out. People who had been waiting in the lobby for the next lift surged in.

"Will?" Mac intuitively knew something was wrong. He was grimacing and there was something wrong with his posture. Her anxiety registered with the increasingly shrillness of her voice. "Billy?"

McAvoy began to slump and the people who had recently entered the elevator pulled back as they noticed something amiss. Lonny reached him and grabbed the back of Will's belt for support just as Will's right leg seemed to buckle.

"Hold the door," Lonny commanded. "Private security, let us through." Once past the doors, he spied two uniformed guards. "Officers—call 9-1-1, we have a medical emergency." One of the men hurried to comply and Church began easing McAvoy to the floor. Lonny made eye contact with the remaining officer. "Secure that elevator and get those people off. It may be a crime scene."

The guard made a curt announcement to the would-be passengers and they disembarked, staring at the ruckus on the floor outside but giving it a wide berth, as if from fear of contamination. He turned a key in the control panel, taking the lift out of service.

"You got a first aid kit? Get it now." Blue North had a top flight first aid bag, of course, but it was in the car, down in the garage and there wasn't time to retrieve it. Lonny would have to rely on what the AWM building manager had put in place and hope that the EMTs arrived soon.

Lonny had helped Will into a sitting position on the floor, back propped against the marble-faced wall. When Lonny withdrew his hand, it came away bloodied, and he heard a sharp intake of air from Mac, on Will's other side.

 _What was happening?_

"Talk to me, McAvoy—let's hear those dulcet tones—" Lonny coaxed, wiping his hand and feeling about his jacket for a clean handkerchief.

Will raised a hand and swallowed hard. "I'm okay—he hit me—I don't know why—"

"I don't know why either, but I can tell you that you aren't okay," Lonny said, looking around to check the progress of his last order to the lobby guard. "You've got a puncture wound—"

" _Puncture_ —in an elevator?" His voice sounded thick, confused.

"Yeah, some guys have all the luck." Lonny motioned to Mac, who was clearly shocked into wordlessness. "You got someone you can call? Someone you work with? Do it now." He wanted to get her focused and she would need emotional support. It was just killing two birds with one stone.

The lobby guard returned with a bulky fabric satchel and opened it so that Lonny could see the contents. He reached for the pre-packaged Trauma Pak and ripped the outer plastic.

"McAvoy, I need to get compression on the wound, so I'm going to have to shift you a bit—it might be uncomfortable, but I want you to hang in there."

Will winced as Lonny moved him to better access the injury. Blood rose from a tiny wound below the ribcage and Lonny applied the thick bandage over the top, pressing until his fingers turned pale and Will uttered a low grunt.

"You're hurting him—" Mac protested.

"I'm fine," Will panted, plainly not.

Lonny looked with irritation at the lobby guard who still hovered nearby. "How 'bout get me an update on that ambulance?"

The uniformed man trotted off to find a phone.

A familiar face from the newsroom appeared and, wordlessly, Maggie took in the scene: the smear of red on the wall, the dark stains on Lonny's sleeves, Mac looking more distraught than she'd ever seen her. She knelt beside Mac.

Lonny increased pressure and Will grimaced, frightening Mac enough to speak again.

"Don't die. I love you. Don't leave me again."

"Not planning—to—lucky—"

The sound of running footfalls heralded the arrival of the medical responders and Maggie gave up her place, backing away several feet. On the other side, Lonny did likewise. Maggie knew she had been summoned to support Mac, who was still holding Will's hand and trying to prod him to responses. While she waited to be of actual use, she looked back at the few drops of blood that trailed from the elevator and contemplated the shelf-life of luck.


	11. Night and Day

_Voices._

 _Voices kept intruding. He didn't recognize them._

 _Hey, stay with me—what's his name?—Will—Will, stay with me, buddy—You, move these people back and give us some room—_

 _Who do I give this to? Some civilian just recovered this outside on the pavement—_

 _Yeah, tell them we're gonna have a P-1 expedite for Roosevelt TC—penetrating abdominal trauma—not hemodynamically stable—_

 _Now, stand back, let's load him—on three—one, two—_

 _Take her with you. That voice, at least, was familiar. Lonny._

 _Will tried to open his eyes but only saw blurs of color. He didn't see her._

 _I'll be right behind once I finish with these guys._

 _Hey, um—Will, look, man, I really need you to stay awake—_

 _But he was finding it hard to stay awake. His eyes kept closing._

 _C'mon, stay with me, Will—_

oooo

"Didn't you get any sleep on the plane?"

Will shook his head. After all, there had been 14 hours from JFK to Dubai, then a six hour layover before catching a distinctly dodgy connection to Kabul, another three hours away. It was the longest, strangest transport he'd ever taken, and at the end of it, he was just grateful none of his fellow passengers had been toting live chickens.

Finally, after nearly 24 hours of continuous travel, he staggered down the air-stairs to the tarmac, still unfolding himself from the most uncomfortable flight in memory. He looked around, taking in a brightly-lit but sepia-tinted landscape of flat geometric planes and hard right angles.

Inside the terminal, the sole baggage carousel took thirty minutes to produce his checked bags. Nothing looked permanently damaged, despite the distinct agricultural odor that had now attached itself to his duffle. As he moseyed to the exit, he stopped at the currency exchange kiosk and allowed a bored fat man to change several hundred dollar bills to an equivalent value in worn pinkish Afghani notes. A driver engaged by CNNI met him outside the terminal and drove him the few miles to the Wazir Akbar Khan district, home to foreign embassies and vaguely Western looking houses. For reasons of creature comforts as well as proximity to political dignitaries, the media, including CNNI, had adopted this district as their hub.

"You McAvoy? Devon Weatherly." The other man stuck out his hand then quickly withdrew it, seeing Will's taped right hand.

Will nodded in lieu of a handshake. He dropped the pasteboard guitar case to the floor and allowed the duffle to slide from his left shoulder.

The other man eyed him with knowing skepticism. "Yeah, the transit's sort of brutal. You'll want to take the day to adjust. But if you feel up to it, I'll go ahead and show you around a bit."

"Sure-okay," Will managed.

"Well, if this was still considered an actual news bureau, I'd be the assistant chief." He shrugged. "But it isn't, so I'm not. I make assignments but I'm just part of the pool. Deke's the de facto chief—he's out right now, but you'll meet him later."

He walked them into another room where three men sat with their feet propped up.

"The heart of the operation. Buddy and Seth handle the shoots—in fact, this is Seth's third year here. This is Jamie. He does voice overs and the beauty shots. Guess he'll have a little competition now that you're on board."

In sarcastic response to the introduction, the man identified as Jamie offered a one hundred watt smile. He was the only one among them who was clean-shaven and with a recent haircut.

Will smiled and gave a perfunctory wave, making clear that traditional handshakes should be dispensed with. The small pleasantries that followed centered on the discomfort of the flight and if he'd gotten any sleep. He declined the offer of coffee, thinking that if he ever got to his hotel, he would want nothing to interfere with his ability to conk out on demand.

"Don't get too many guys with name recognition passing through here," Buddy observed, his eyebrows flexed up.

"Decided I ought to see things for myself," Will returned, amiably. As a celebrity journalist, he really couldn't afford to piss off the rank-and-file; he needed someone to teach him the ropes.

"Hurt your hand?" Seth sniffed, indicating Will's right hand.

"Second metacarpal," Will confirmed without admitting anything more.

But he could read it in the other man's eyes. _Uh huh. Boxer's fracture._

"How's the other guy?"

Opting to ignore the remark, Will jerked a finger over his shoulder and looked back to Devon. "Who're they?" he asked, indicating an adjacent room, where several bored people could be seen sitting on hard plastic chairs near a vending machine.

"The wanna-bes. Glory-hounds, interns—whatever you want to call 'em. The kids who come here thinking they're the next Ernie Pyle or Murrow. We use 'em as go-fers." Devon consulted his watch. "Hey, I'm going to check and see if the driver's back to take you to the hotel."

Will nodded. Conversation resumed amongst the three seasoned journalists, so Will figured he was effectively dismissed and wandered to the room across the corridor.

Instant recognition from two of the four people in the room.

It was one of the funny things about celebrity. Recognizing the moment when they recognized you. It was genuinely like a cartoon character with a light bulb over its head.

"I'm Will. Just got here."

The three young men and one woman looked from each other to him, then back to each other.

"Well." He took in their silence and waited several beats. "Guess we'll be seeing each other around—"

"Wait—" the young woman scrambled to her feet. "Welcome—we're just not used to—uh, my name's Maggie—Margaret Jordan—" She thrust out her hand before she noticed his taped one, then made a gurgle of embarrassment.

"Glad to meet you, Maggie-Margaret." The side of his mouth hitched up in amusement. "You ever think about shortening that moniker?"

She gulped and nodded.

Taking her cue, the others rose and reeled off names. Luke. Milo. Deshaun.

Will acknowledged each with another nod. "Any experts among you on the ENG?"

Milo cleared his throat. "I trained on the DVCPRO—and I'm familiar with the Canon Digi—"

"What do they use here?"

"Canon Digi, but they've never let me—"

"We'll talk tomorrow." Will turned back to Maggie. "You, too. Tomorrow."

oooo

 _Motion._

 _Although most sensation was receding, he was nonetheless conscious of movement, of gliding over pavement with occasional bumps, probably denoting thresholds or expansion joints. There was an accompanying cacophony of voices._

 _Heads up—let us through, please—_

 _Is that who I think it is—what happened—is there a shooter, someone said there was a shooter in the lobby—_

 _One bump provoked a sudden spasm of agony in his right side and he clenched his teeth, a short grunt escaping._

 _Billy? Wait—you're hurting him—_

 _Systolic's 90—we're packing and starting fluid resuss—_

 _Here, watch it—that's it._

 _Ma'am, this is going to be a rough ride, so you're gonna have to strap in—_

oooo

"Strap in, scribes. This ain't no smooth-ridin' Cadillac. And that brain sponge ain't gonna help you." The military driver plucked the cigarette from his mouth, flung it out the window, and inclined his head to indicate the ball cap on Will's head. "Where's your helmet?"

"Been here a year and I haven't had to wear one yet."

"You ride in the front seat of my truck, you wear a helmet, sweetheart." The driver, Delaney, slid his sunglasses back into place and turned back to the wheel and put the vehicle into gear. He hadn't driven them before and seemed slightly disapproving of the concept of embedded journalists in a warzone. "The ordnance disposal guys were through here yesterday, but, in my experience, that isn't a guarantee of anyfuckingthing."

As the truck lurched forward, Milo pushed a Kevlar helmet over the seat to Will. He slipped it on, hesitated, then snapped the chin strap as well. Anything to speed the plow with these regimented military types.

Delaney tapped his MP3 and scratchy sound blared from the vehicle's incredibly low-end speaker. The Black Eyed Peas' Boom Boom Pow. He lit another cigarette, flagrantly disregarding the placard on the dashboard that forbade smoking in the vehicle.

Milo leaned forward and yelled into Will's ear, "I think Maggs was kinda relieved this morning when you gave her those expenditure logs to finish. She doesn't like the field bathrooms, you know."

Will just nodded, not moved enough to try to shout a response over the blasting music. This promised to be an all-day ride, and there wouldn't be any gas stations with tidy water closets along the way. He was willing to be branded a sexist in order to give the girl a break.

They were third in a convoy of six vehicles headed to Khost, about 60 miles due south. The military mission was, ostensibly, to recover retrograde military cargo. It was just a day-long slog to a remote post to haul off whatever gear could be recovered and torch that which could not.

There was no journalistic mission at all. Just an opportunity for a look-see further down the road.

An hour later, when the sun was stronger, Will opened his window. He could smell the road dust and diesel exhaust from the vehicles ahead of them, but an open window was a luxury the boys in the armored MRAPs couldn't enjoy. He twisted the cap from a bottle of water and took a long pull.

It was nine-thirty a.m. in Someplace in Afghanistan, a spot identified only by a string of lats and longs on a GPS. What time was it in New York? And when was the last time he'd wondered?

True, he thought about it a little less now. It wasn't so much the passage of a year that made it fainter, but events began to crowd it out. Still, whenever the pace slackened, whenever life bordered on routine, his thoughts went somewhere else.

There should be resignation by now. If she hadn't tried to reach him after the events of last February, when he'd been held in Karz, then miraculously freed, he knew she never would. They were irretrievably severed now. Knowing that actually made him feel more hollow than when he'd first arrived in Afghanistan, hoping the enormity of his action would register with her, or that she would relent long enough to glance at one of his emails or letters, listen to one of the voicemail messages he'd left when it was far easier to access a phone.

He was coming to terms with how he'd fooled himself into hoping.

The sun was becoming hotter and the HUMVEE's air conditioning wasn't keeping up, so he popped the clasp on the helmet chin strap and shifted slightly in his seat so that he faced the mostly shady passenger side window. Outside the vehicle, the terrain was pretty bleak.

There was a bright flash.

He never heard the boom.

Then he was flying.

Many seconds went missing, the moment of impact among them. When sense returned, he found himself crumpled into the gray-brown sand of the berm. There was dirt in his mouth and the metallic taste of blood.

There goes the dental work.

He slit his eyes and saw a column of black smoke writhing up from a vehicle. The convoy had stopped and men were out on the road, weapons at the ready, encircling the disabled HUMVEE. It looked like a silent movie with an uneven fps rate, the movements of the men so frenetic, loudly telegraphing their agitation without sound.

Belatedly, he realized he couldn't hear anything beyond a persistent ringing.

Will raised himself on one elbow and that was when the corpsman found him.

The medic probed for broken bones and obvious trauma, then tapped Will's shoulder for attention.

 _Can you stand?_

A single nod.

 _We need to get you moved, in case there's a follow up detonation._

The blast had left him feeling all his appendages were made of jelly, and he had to lean heavily on the smaller corpsman. As they stumbled to another vehicle, Will could see the one he'd been riding in was burning. The front left tire was shredded, a broken axle visible. The driver's side was stove in.

Milo appeared, bleeding from cuts to his face and hands. He helped situate Will into another HUMVEE while the medic ran off to check someone else.

Take it easy, Milo mouthed. He was holding a compress to Will's head. _You're okay_.

"Okay" being a relative term.

Even Will, in his addled state, recognized this. He looked down and noticed his arm had been chewed up by road rash. Gravel clung to his clothes and his knee suddenly throbbed ominously. His shirt had blood on it and he connected it to whatever it was that Milo was attending to.

Another tap on his shoulder. Milo again.

 _The driver didn't—well, we were lucky today._

oooo

 _There was abrupt heaving motion and Will cracked his eyes. A man in blue loomed over him, expression intent but devoid of fervency. Will's injury was just a workday problem, something to solve—_

— _Or not._

 _Behind the man, Will finally saw Mac, her expression creased with anxiety. There was a plastic mask on Will's face, so he tried to lift a hand to signal to her, but found his arm, too, encumbered by tubes and medical appurtenances. Under the mask, his jaw worked._

 _I think he's saying something—_

 _She edged forward in the close confines of the ambulance._

 _Will—I can't hear—what is he—_

 _Hey, okay, we're here—move back, we need to get him inside—_

 _There was jostling of the gurney and Will's eyes seemed spring-loaded to close again. Before they did, he caught another glimpse of her, looking frantic, torn between rushing to him and following the EMT's instruction._

 _Her voice pitched up. But I didn't understand what he-_

oooo

"I don't understand—" His voice was carefully controlled, dialing back emotion, trying to maintain some logic in order to get through this.

"I just told you."

"And I said I for—"

"That—" She stabbed a finger at him and retreated another step. "Your—magnanimity—is just choking me. Can't you be angry, Will?"

"What good will anger do?" He ran a hand through his hair and sank down onto the sofa. "Look—I'm trying to process this. You just dropped a little history on me and you want a response—but there's got to be some context, something I'm not getting—"

"I was fucking my ex-boyfriend."

"Yeah. Got that part." His elbows slid to his knees and he let his head drop forward, his fists clenching and releasing. "You wanna get back with Brian?" he asked in a low but level voice.

"No—god no. Please don't put words in my mouth. I told you, this happened months ago, before I really knew what I—"

"So why are you telling me now?"

"You needed to know."

"Wasn't I enough? Did you—did you ever really—" Feeling the need to ask, but not the need to know, he still couldn't force the verb from his lips. "Because, Mac, we let it get pretty far." He nodded at the open ring box on the table.

She sank to her knees on the floor in front of him, placing her hand on top of his. "Yes, Billy, I did—I do—"

"Then what is this all about?"

"You deserve someone who's surer—someone not prone to backslides and self-doubt—" She made a strangled sound. "You've been wrong about me, Will, I've never been what you thought I was—some perfect being with no—"

"This is all bullshit double-talk, Mac. I love you. Of course I'm angry on some level, of course this hurts—but it doesn't change my—I mean, we can withstand—"

"I can't." She seemed to collapse inward. "I can't—and you'll come to resent it—me—"

"No," he interjected.

"Yes," she overrode. "You will. Not now, perhaps, but one day. And you will look at me—and I won't be able to bear that look—" She wouldn't meet his eyes. "You have to leave."

Used to taking her direction, he stood.

"No," she corrected, face still averted. "I mean, we can't work together—we can't be at the same place."

He waited a long time before echoing, with heavy irony, "The same place. Does that also include the same city? The same state? Country? Is it okay with you if I stay on the same planet?"

She didn't answer.

He turned and reached for his jacket.

"I was a really good boyfriend."

That brought her up short. "I know that. I never said you weren't."

"Well, you sort of implied it."

"That's wrong." An admission, dropping her head guiltily.

"Goddam right that's wrong." His indignation was chokingly apparent. Long pause. "I was a good guy—I was a good guy."

He left her flat and five seconds later she heard a sharp thwack. It sounded like something struck the wall in the corridor outside.

oooo

 _What've we got?_

 _Possible onset hemorrhagic shock resulting from PAT—pulse 153 bpm—you got that respiration number yet?_

— _34 and coming down—_

 _Okay, let's wait on intubation for now. Where's that FAST cart, I need a look at the peritoneum-_

Amid the cacophony of shouted orders, a man in scrubs approached Mac, who had been gradually shrinking near the back curtain of the trauma bay.

"Can you help me with his history?"

She swallowed and nodded, just now noticing that Charlie Skinner had arrived and was standing beside her.

"When did he last eat?"

"This morning—juice, a bagel."

"Allergies?"

"No."

"Does he take any medication, anything for pain or—"

"Hardly ever. A little Naproxen. He hurt himself playing baseball in high school—his elbow and his knee—sometimes he—"

"Anything else? Any psychotropics or sedatives?"

"No."

"Yes." Charlie overruled her. "Paxil, I'm unsure of the dosage."

She stared. "Since when?"

"And Ambien. I don't know that dosage either."

She was plainly aghast now. "When did—but I didn't—"

"Any blood thinners or statins?"

They both shook their heads, Mac casting a surreptitious look to Charlie to see if he had any further surprises.

"Okay." The medical technician dropped his clipboard. "We're prepping him for a FAST ultrasound—it'll help us evaluate the soft tissue damage. Once we've got him stabilized, we can figure out what we're dealing with and make repairs." He shrugged and offered a sympathetic smile. "I'm not going to tell you not to worry, because this is obviously quite serious, but he's getting good care. There's coffee in the waiting room—why don't you help yourself and one of the doctors will be in to update you in a little while."

Mac gave a final conflicted look to where Will was surrounded by medical personnel. She remembered how cold and wet his hand had seemed during the frenzied transport to the ER, knowing that must be a bad sign. She felt compelled to stay and keep watch, and Charlie finally had to put both hands on her arm to guide her away.

"C'mon."

"Just let me—I need to—" She twisted away and squeezed between the attendants around Will, leaning over him briefly. Charlie wasn't sure whether she whispered in his ear or kissed him.

Lonny Church loitered purposefully outside the curtain and looked up as they exited the trauma bay.

Charlie stopped. "Shouldn't you be talking into your cufflink or something?"

He intended it as gallows humor, but Lonny's expression conveyed that he took it as indictment and his eyes fell. He expected to be held to account for having allowed Will to come to harm. Scott McPherson of Blue North was on his way to AWM right now to brief Mrs. Lansing; doubtless, Lonny's alternate had already been dispatched to relieve him here at the hospital. Dereliction of duty required no less.

But Charlie Skinner didn't look reproachful. "What've you got?"

"I wanted to say—there was no indication—and I'm sorry I didn't see—in time—"

Charlie's lips compressed. "Don't beat yourself up over this, son. C'mon and get a cup of coffee with us."

"I can't. I gotta stay here until someone else gets here, it's the protocol." Lonny looked up, directly at Mac. "I'm really sorry."

oooo

"I knew he'd pull something like this," Jim said, shaking his head.

Maggie froze. "Come again?"

"This." A two-handed gesture to indicate the hospital waiting room. "As if his coming back was ever going to end on a happier note."

"You're suggesting Will deliberately—?"

"I'm saying he likes attention. It'd be just like him to try to cause her grief."

Sloan and Don Keefer had entered the room and were following the Jim-Maggie fracas with interest.

"—I mean, think about it. They're sharing the same security detail—she's really been making the effort lately to get along with that damn prima donna—"

Jim seemed oblivious to Maggie's look of sheer incredulity.

"I can't believe you're saying this—and now, of all—"

Then, without encouragement, Sloan piled on. "She never complained, you know, even when that writer was here the other week, shining bright lights into all the wreckage of that old relationship with McAvoy, stuff you couldn't possibly—"

Maggie thrust out a steadying hand. "Wait, I'm still having trouble wrapping my head around this. Will was shanked in a public elevator this morning, and you think it was his own conspiracy to curry attention and spite MacKenzie?"

"It isn't that far-fetched," he lobbed back.

"It's exactly that far-fetched. Furthermore, Mac doesn't have exclusive claim to the moral high ground," Maggie returned hotly, all filters cast aside now. "After Will was taken, when no one was sure what would happen, I called ACN and she didn't have the decency—"

Don laughed nervously, uncertain if he should get involved but feeling a compelling need to correct some obvious misperceptions. "Let's not get too spooled up, folks. Mac and I talked once—it was a while back. She told me she has quite a—regard—for McAvoy, in spite of everything—in the past, and that—" His smile wilted under hostile glares from the other three, and his voice took on a more subdued tone. "All I'm saying is, she indicated that she knows that sometimes she may have acted contrary to her own best interests, and this thing with McAvoy may have been—"

"She said that? I don't believe it." Jim locked his arms across his chest. "Because I was there when—" His words trailed off as he noticed Charlie standing at the far end of the room, quietly combusting.

"What the fuck is going on here?"

Sloan rolled her eyes and moved slightly behind Jim, who tried to maintain an air of defiance.

"We were just talking about—" He saw Mac edge from behind Charlie and reconsidered saying more, stammering, "Nothing. Nothing important."

"Then break it up," Charlie growled.

But Mac put a stilling hand on his sleeve. "No, let's clear the air, Charlie. This concerns me, too."

"Mac, you don't owe anyone any—and this isn't the time."

"It's way past time." She turned back to the assembled co-workers, including a hushed Tamara and Gary in the corner.

"Many of you think you know something, and some of you know a little, but none of you know what you should, in order to make the judgments you're trying to make right now."

She paused to let that register, then continued, slowly and softly. "A little over two years ago, Will and I were together. And then—I ruined everything. I put pride and fear first. Will was the wronged party, he was always the wronged party. I let—no," she paused and took a steadying breath, "I encouraged you all to believe otherwise, because it made me feel better."

Jim shifted uncomfortably, averting his eyes, and Sloan looked decidedly chastened, perhaps recalling times when she'd faulted Will McAvoy for a romantic crime that, as it turned out, he'd never committed. The others looked surprised and ill-at-ease for having their suppositions challenged. Maggie felt vindication but dropped her eyes as well, not wanting to cause more anxiety to Mac.

"I allowed him—unjustly—to carry the blame. Which he was always willing to do, for some reason." Mac made a bitter laugh. "And of course workplace and celebrity gossip feasted at his expense and I never set the record straight. He—"

Here, she faltered.

"So—he went somewhere dangerous and did something difficult, because I had hurt him and sent him away. And when we believed he might be lost—" She paused again. "I owned both the guilt and the grief, and I—"

"Mac, you've got to turn the page on this—" From Charlie, behind her.

"I love him." That declaration still needed to be made and Charlie had interrupted her. She knew she had to completely level with this group. "And for some inexplicable reason, he still cares for me. This should be very simple."

"This is very simple: One of us was attacked this morning, for no reason other than doing his job." Charlie glared around the room, wanting to put this in small emotional syllables for easy digestion. "Ripping each other—ripping ourselves—to shreds isn't going to help anything or anybody." And, specifically for Jim's benefit, he added, "We are not going to stand around and make things worse by inventing motives or revisiting ancient history."

Tamara, for one, welcomed the truce. "Have we heard anything? I mean, how he—"

"Someone is supposed to come in a little while."

A prolonged silence followed, which Maggie finally broke. "He's always been a lucky guy," she reminded the others, particularly Mac. "I mean, really lucky."

oooo

The verdict, when it was finally delivered several hours later, arrived after most of the others had returned to work. The news cycle rolled on, absorbing that fact that McAvoy had become a headline himself. Only Maggie and Charlie still remained with Mac, but Lonny had joined them, his vigil outside Trauma 3 finally rendered superfluous.

A harried young woman in scrubs introduced herself to Mac. "The technical phrase is a hepatic laceration—injury to the liver. This severity of this particular wound seems to straddle the line between Grades II and III, which is certainly not the worst we often see in Trauma, but is still quite serious. He was lucky." The doctor was oblivious to the sharp looks suddenly exchanged amongst the others. "Now, the liver is heavily vascularized so it can be the source of heavy bleeding."

"Surgery?" Mac prompted in a squeak, hating to even commit the idea to words, except that it seemed better to know the worst if it was inevitable.

"We wanted to start with non-invasive options—packing and compression, fluid resuscitation, passive JP drain. So far—well, we've staved off coagulopathy—um, that's the inability of the blood to clot on its own, causing excessive bleeding. We did a preliminary FAST scan—focused assessment of, of, shit, I forget the exact acronym, but it's essentially a quick look. We'll need to do a CT in a few days, just to close the door on the potential for other complications."

"Then—everything's going to be—?"

"Well—officially, the prognosis is still guarded. We have to watch for increases to abdominal pressures, clotting issues, anything to indicate the bleeding has resumed or gotten worse. Plus, infection is always a threat." She made a sympathetic shrugging gesture. "I would say that everything we know now indicates a hopeful prognosis."

"When can I see him?"

"We hope to have him settled in ICU for the night, then, assuming things go well, perhaps transfer him to the Telemetry Unit tomorrow or the next day. A patient gets good observation in Telemetry. To answer your question—perhaps four or five hours. But don't expect to play canasta or discuss world affairs with him—he'll be sedated."

Thinking that that didn't matter—she just needed to see him for herself, see that he was breathing, touch his hand and feel that it was warm again and not the clammy, unresponsive thing she'd clutched in the ambulance—she belatedly joined Charlie in thanking the young resident.

"Okay, here's what we're going to do," Charlie took charge. "This young one and I are going to hang around here for a few hours while Mr. Church takes you home for a bit." She started to protest so he spoke more quickly to head off her predictable protestation. "Get a little rest, get something to eat, change clothes. This is going to be a marathon, MacKenzie, and your starting pistol doesn't go off for four more hours." He dropped his chin and looked up at her through shaggy eyebrows. "Be ready."

She was torn, feeling somehow that to leave at all, even for a few hours, was tantamount to abandonment.

"Good plan," Lonny affirmed, "Let's run with it." He moved to the door, waiting expectantly for Mac.

"Mac—wait," Maggie stepped to Mac. "Can I ask—not today, of course—but maybe sometime soon—could you fill Jim in on the details of his repatriation from the Tahir Square riot? I mean—"

The hint of a smile touched Mac's lips and she nodded. "I know what you mean." Then, to Lonny as she moved past him, without a trace of irony, "Can we take the stairs?"

oooo

Like the drip drip drip of raindrops, a persistent sound teased him. Faint but not distant, it nonetheless acted as a beacon, summoning him back to awareness.

When he finally surfaced from an unrecognized dream landscape and opened his eyes, the room was dim. Two small machines on poles nearby emitted the soft beeps with metronomic urgency, and he could feel a slight pinch to his forearm when he tried to shift it that indicated he was somehow tethered.

His other hand was free, above the sheet. A few inches beyond it, he saw a spray of dark hair. Mac's head and shoulders rested on the edge of the hospital bed, in some peculiar feat of contortion, and her deep, steady breathing indicated she slept.

He tried to reconstruct the missing time. They had been together in a small, windowless room. Not alone—someone else had been there, too. Something happened. He couldn't remember what. There were snatches of scenes—people (including Mac) looking down at him, lights, motion—but none of it made a narrative. And now he was here, in a quiet, dark place, with Mac.

But his perceptions were short-lived and he could feel himself beginning to slip back into oblivion. Before he did, he pushed his free hand forward and covered hers.


End file.
